I was dismayed, but not all that surprised by Nicholas G. Hahn III’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal. It has become fashionable in conservative circles in the United States to blame everything they dislike in American politics and religion on Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the late archbishop of Chicago. With the papacy of Pope Francis and the need for a new archbishop in Chicago, the legacy of Bernardin is again attracting much attention.
Toward the beginning of his opinion piece, Hahn rightfully points out: that “those trying to interpret Pope Francis, on the left and the right…see in him a reflection of their own hopes.” The risk, as he suggests, is that we remake the pope into our own image. Unfortunately, his selective and uncharitable reading of Cardinal Bernardin does just that.
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