Here is the blurb from the dust jacket:
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin in 1983 became not only the official leader of Chicago Catholics (the largest community of Catholics in the U.S.) but also the unofficial leader and spokesman for America's 52 million Catholics.
Bernardin is not an ordinary man. This is not an ordinary biography. And, for the Catholic Church, these are not ordinary times. Author Eugene Kennedy uses the touch of a novelist to capture the rich embroidery of politics, programs and traditions involved in the wrenching transfer of power now taking place in the Church.
In Cardinal Bernardin: Easing conflicts -and battling for the soul of American Catholicism. Eugene Kennedy paints an unusual psychological portrait of the dominant figure in the American Catholic culture. Cardinal Bernardin's ascendancy within the hierarchy signals a dramatic change in the American Catholic Church.
This is unmistakably an insider book. The reader is in the hands of a masterful story teller who understands and explains the significance of what he describes. Here are quick, deft sketches of influential Catholic leaders of recent times.
Kennedy uses the telling anecdote or incident to illuminate the intrigue underneath the panoply of the Church. He explores in unforgettable fashion the great issues tearing at the Church: birth control, homosexuality, abortion, papal authority, celibacy, women's rights. For the first time, the strange and unusual relationship between Bernardin and the controversial best selling novelist, Father Andrew Greeley, is explained. Here are the details on how Bernardin defused the angry and truculent Greeley whose efforts to oust Cardinal Cody proved damaging to Bernardin.
Kennedy tells how a potential prince of the Church is identified, tested and groomed. Stay with Joseph L. Bernardin in Rome as the archbishop of Chicago prepares to don his crimson cassock. Share his thoughts as he reflects on the long journey that took this first generation Italian -American boy from Columbia, South Carolina, to receive his red hat from the hands of the pope.
Eugene Kennedy, described by theologian David Tracy as "quite simply our best critic of American Catholic life and thought," uses his intimate knowledge of the leaders and the Swiss watch-like inner workings of Catholicism in this study of Chicago's Cardinal Bernardin. He brings to it the skills he has developed as a novelist, reviewer, biographer, and contributor to such publications as the New York Times Magazine and the Chicago Tribune. The winner of many awards for his books, he is also a professor of psychology at Loyola University of Chicago.
| Price | $2.50 |
|---|---|
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| Total | SOLD |
