There is a quiet that now surrounds the empty throne of the archbishop of Chicago–peace for some, but a creeping anxiety for others whose lives and work have revolved around a man who is no longer there.
In the most practical terms, the death of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin is the end of an administration. Not unlike presidential Cabinet members after an election, those who served the cardinal most closely– clergy and laypeople–are left with an uncertain future.
Meanwhile, in the higher echelons of the Roman Catholic Church, the curious, tight-lipped anti-politics of succession have begun.
For those advising the Vatican on candidates for a new archbishop, and for those who might themselves be candidates, discussing the vacancy in public is taboo.
The silence goes beyond a sense of seemliness, to a belief that Pope John Paul II’s choice will ultimately be guided by the Holy Spirit: the great “counselor” to believers that the New Testament says God sent to Earth upon Jesus’ ascension.
For those who have that faith, the decision is out of human reach and therefore an absurd subject for speculation. For those on whom speculation focuses, it can be downright uncomfortable.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose name is one of many tossed about as a possible successor to Bernardin. “I didn’t come into this to do what I wanted to do. . . . I wanted to offer my life in service to God.”
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Paul Wilkes, author of many books and articles on Catholicism, including the recently published “The Good Enough Catholic,” believes there are more practical reasons bishops avoid speculation as well.
“This is not a papacy where you want to get your name in print,” Wilkes said. “There are files in Rome on every one of these men, and they keep track of what is said.”
Whether the mechanism of transition is human, divine or some combination, the waiting isn’t easy.
“There is always anxiety in any organization when there are changes at the policymaking level,” said Rev. Thomas Baima, who heads the Chicago archdiocese’s Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. “A new archbishop will have a different style. And the archdiocese will eventually take on that style.”
Baima has been spared some of that anxiety. In May, Bernardin assigned Baima to spend the next three years in Rome earning a doctorate in ecumenical studies from Angelicum University.
But from Baima’s successor, who arrives in December, to administrators who have held their posts for more than a decade, the arrival of a new archbishop could signal a radical career change.
The employees in the archdiocese’s Pastoral Center, its headquarters, serve at the will of the archbishop. The closer they are to the archbishop, the more likely they are to change with administrations.
Those who are archdiocesan priests may be reassigned to parish or other work. Priests who belong to religious orders–Jesuits or Franciscans, for example–may be returned to their orders, for work elsewhere around the world.
Unlike previous Chicago administrations, and unlike many other dioceses around the country, the highest level of Bernardin’s Pastoral Center staff also includes many laypeople, men and women who have no lifetime guarantee of employment from the church.
Baima and others, however, say a new archbishop is unlikely to clean house the day he arrives.
Bernardin appointed his own choices to top posts in the archdiocese, but he did it over many years. And because the administration Bernardin leaves behind is, in many ways, more stable than the one he inherited, there is no immediate need for change.
Moreover, with the clergy stretched thinner every year, there is no large surplus pool of talent to draw from.
“It’s not like turning a blank page,” Baima said. “The human and spiritual needs of the people of Chicago don’t change with a new archbishop. Fundamentally, the archdiocese is about serving those needs.”
Bernardin and Pope John Paul II spoke about those needs during a 35-minute meeting in September, at the pope’s retreat in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome.
Archbishop James P. Keleher of Kansas City, Kan., a former Chicago priest, said Pope John Paul will not forget what Bernardin told him or what he knows personally about the bishops available for the post.
“It’s amazing how well he knows American bishops,” Keleher said.
Many observers believe that the pope’s top priority will be finding somebody whose style is closer to his own than Bernardin’s.
“I’m sure he’ll appoint someone who is a kindred spirit . . . cut from the same cloth,” said Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. Unlike many of his colleagues, Weakland said speculation on successors is “natural . . . as good recreation.”
Weakland has seen it from the other side as well. When Cardinal John Cody of Chicago died in 1982, Weakland was one of the names suggested as a top contender. Perhaps the only candidate who received more attention was Bernardin, who quickly proved the common wisdom right.
Weakland, however, cautioned that this pope has surprised people more often than not.
Cardinal John O’Connor of New York–a member of the Vatican board that makes recommendations on bishops’ appointments, and perhaps the pope’s closest informal adviser in the U.S.–had been bishop of the small Scranton, Pa., diocese for less than a year when the pope plucked him out of the hills in 1984 for one of the top archdioceses in the nation.
Weakland said that for Chicago’s vacancy, he has heard talk about the same bishops showing up most often in news reports: Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh and Bishop Pilla of Cleveland.
Then the Milwaukee prelate predicted that the pope would surprise everybody.
“He will come up with a set of names we can’t even think of,” Weakland said.
Wuerl was less willing to talk about the future of the Chicago archdiocese, except to say that Bernardin’s successor will start from a strong position.
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“Whoever is the next archbishop is going to have the legacy of Cardinal Bernardin. And that is a very rich and good spiritual legacy,” Wuerl said.
In an interview last month in Cincinnati, Pilarczyk said that following Bernardin had both advantages and disadvantages. Pilarczyk knows–he took over the Cincinnati archdiocese after Bernardin left for Chicago in 1982.
“It was both easy and hard,” Pilarczyk said. “It was hard in the sense that I knew that I was not Bernardin and everybody else in the diocese knew that I was not Bernardin.
“The nice part was that I inherited a diocese which, according to my opinion, was in very nice shape, financially, spiritually and in terms of expectations of leadership.”