Two men for this season.

Two Men for This Season

WITH THE death of New York's Terence Cardinal Cooke last October 6 (just two weeks after the unexpected demise of Boston's Humberto Cardinal Medeiros), American Catholics, liberal and conservative, realized that an historic moment had arrived.

Consider the situation: New York is the most powerful and prestigious archdiocese, Boston the third largest; two more cardinals (John Krol of Philadelphia and Timothy Manning of Los Angeles) must retire shortly. Only Chicago's Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, at 55, remained a presumptively long-term incumbent among the five active cardinals. Just what this means was vividly described by Professor James Hitchcock, a leading Catholic historian, in his article "Will John Paul II Reorient a Church at Sea?' [NR, Nov. 25]. He summed up as follows: "Led now by Cardinal Bernardin, the American Church has all but turned its back on Rome. Dissent has become its orthodoxy, rebellion its rule. A good bishop is hard to find. But the Pope is going to have to start finding some, and soon,' because, as Hitchcock wrote, he has "the opportunity to choose afresh' the "highest leadership of American Catholicism, an opportunity rarely given to a pope within so short a space of time.'

Well, the Pope seems to be seizing that opportunity in his accustomed fashion. His appointment of Bernard Law to Boston (from the sparsely Catholic Missouri diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau) emphasizes orthodoxy: Law is one of the few younger (52) bishops to go "down the line' in support of John Paul on everything from birth control to a firm No on ordaining women. And his choice of John J. O'Connor to be the primus inter pares Archbishop of New York may prove spectacular (the New York Times called it a "surprise'--a good omen, surely?).

Bishop O'Connor is a most impressive man. Welleducated and hard-working, he spent 27 years as a military chaplain. Having seen war first-hand in Vietnam and elsewhere, O'Connor seemed the perfect man to represent reality on the five-bishop committee that drafted the U.S. Bishops' Peace Pastoral. He was, and he did: Tough and articulate, he fought stubbornly to turn a near-pacifist first draft into the far more restrained final result. Last May, in reward, he was made Bishop of Scranton, upon which he descended much like John Paul II upon Rome, preaching, exhorting, visiting his new flock, urging his priests to restore the season of sound doctrine.

Evidently the Pope too was listening, and decided he had heard his man for New York. We think he's right, and wish the archbishop-elect well in what everybody expects is his mission: to lead a turnaround of the Church in the United States from a looming "Americanist' fissure back to orthodoxy. One thing seems certain: O'Connor is the best and most important result to date of the Peace Pastoral.