Cardinal Joseph Bernardin: a shepherd enfolded by his flock.

An early Bob Newhart routine has a game company man listening over the phone to Abner Doubleday's cockamamie idea. "Nine men on a side, Ab? (chuckle) Why nine? (chuckle) Why not, say eight, or ten? And the ball landing on one side of the line is fair? On the other side is foul?" The gamesman barely contains himself. Ab has a good idea now and then, but this baseball business is a laugher.

Somewhere between Bob Newhart and Kafka falls the reliability of suppressed-memory evidence of sex abuse as invoked by the accuser of Cardinal Joseph Benardin of Chicago. The accuser says that under therapy he has remembered being sodomized by Bernardin sixteen or more years ago and has brought suit, asking $10 million for the pain and anguish caused.

"Spectral evidence," mutters a Chicago-area cleric over breakfast coffee, his Tribune open before him. He has in mind the testimony that put alleged witches behind bars and worse in seventeenth-century New England. Now the crucible engulfs the leader of the American church's progressive, you might say American, wing.

On the other hand, comments a young recent graduate of an Eastern college where rage simmers constantly about abuse of women by men, it's the sort of evidence a rape victim recalls only after plumbing the depths of her psyche.

In Chicago, let me tell you, the latter response is barely evident. You might say it's suppressed, held in reserve for when some other, more concrete revelations are made, of a less spectral nature.

In other words, Chicago is 99 percent behind Bernardin, and you know about the I percent only spectrally.

Bernardin might be panned here for mismanagement, as for the number of schools and parishes closed on his watch, but he's no candidate for obloquy. He has people mad at him for not being tough enough or shrewd enough or ready enough to take charge of his (a) rebellious or (b) mean-spirited operation. Why doesn't he (a) crack down on altar girls and rail against libertinism or (b) clean out his Augean chancery stables of time-servers and me-firsters?

A priest may privately call him a "pantywaist," using a quaint, playground-style term for a weak-knee. But almost to a man, priests like Bernardin. The best-known of them, Andrew Greeley, a typically fractious Chicago-breed priest (and the type goes a long way back), is in his corner. Having defended the guilty, the archdiocese now must defend the innocent, he said.

Hundreds gave Bernardin standing ovations at a seminary-campus meeting on his return from the Washington bishops' meeting and at the inaugural sesquicentennial-year Mass at Holy Name Cathedral. His predecessor, Cardinal John P. Cody, received all sorts of orchestrated support when he was pilloried by the Sun-Times for alleged financial and noncelibate misbehavior. At least some of it was heartfelt, but standing ovations were saved for his resignation announcement, which never came.

Bernardin not only received standing ovations from supporters but he demonstrated observable grace under pressure, delivering a bravura news conference performance in which he handled a dozen (it seemed like a dozen) "How do you feel?" questions along the lines of "Otherwise, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" How did those bozos think he felt? Just curious, they were.

Bernardin never quite rejoined, but he did fix a blue-eyed gaze or two and allowed himself slight shows of impatience. But not even the frenziedly feeding media have been what you call hard on him. Interview stories have featured churchgoers whose presumably unscripted remarks could not have been scripted better. "We feel for the cardinal, and at the same time we have to respect the pain of victims whoever they are," etc.

Bernardin had already said it, as the Tribune's religion writer, Michael Hirsley, emphasized in a column. His defense must be carried on "in such a way that it will not frighten or scare off true victims," said Bernardin.

By saying it, he "did a critical service to victims of clergy abuse at precisely a time when it might not have been expected of him. He refused to let their legitimate cause be swept away," said Hirsley.

Or as Barbara Blaine, of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said, also quoted by Hirsley, "He has set a perfect example of how to respond to allegations. He has aggressively defended himself without attacking victims."

He even offered to go and see and "comfort" the accuser, a thirty-four-year-old AIDS victim. One recalls Pope John Paul 11 bending in prayer in the prison cell with Mehmet Ali Agca, his attempted assassin. "I'm a pastor," said Bernardin.