As some who was critical about Cardinal John O’Connor’s
intervention in the 1984 Presidential election, I came to an understanding of
him that was almost, but not quite admiration. A couple of things altered my
opinion. First and foremost was his palpable and public outrage at the murder of
three nuns and a lay worker by a right wing death squad in El Salvador .
The Vatican
ignored them, Cardinal O’Connor did not.
Then there was his attitudes toward Gay rights. What the Gay
community never really understood was that O’Connor was not a free agent in the
controversy, but had obligations to Rome
that came with his office.
Two things stand out to me: one was the creation of the Terrance Cardinal
Cooke Health
Care Center
on Fifth Avenue ,
across the avenue from Central Park . While the
Center’s web cite now states a broader message, it was first and foremost when
it was founded a health care center for AIDS patients. There were stories about
O’Connor volunteering to do menial tasks at the center as an example of
compassion for the afflicted.
That’s one plus. But there is another, the name of the
Center. Cardinal Cooke was personal secretary to Cardinal Spellman who was a
lion in the Church during his regime and the first to be labeled “the American
Pope.” He was also a practicing homosexual. He used to spend weekends on Roy
Cohn’s yacht. Cook’s reign as Cardinal was relatively short. He died in office
of what was officially called “throat cancer.” Many believe it was AIDS and I at first though there was irony in
O’Connor’s naming the Church’s AIDS center for him.
I came to believe that I was wrong. O’Connor was a retired
Navy Admiral, he didn’t do irony. As Cardinal, he would have been well-informed
as to the true nature of Cooke’s condition.
Not only did O’Connor name the AIDS center for Cooke, he
proposed Cooke for sainthood.
Today, there was a brief reminder of what a complex man
O’Connor was in New York Times. The article concerns the fact that despite the
huffing and puffing of current Cardinal Timothy Dolan about the “outrage” of
Obamacare requiring Catholic hospitals to offer insurance plans that include
contraception as a paid service, that for more three decades the New York
Archdiocese hospitals have offered such insurance..
Who was the Catholic prelate who acquiesced to this outrage?
Here’s what an Archdiocese spokesman told the times:
“Mr. Zwilling, the spokesman for the New York New York
Further the deponent sayeth not.
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