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The most interesting airport run of my life took place Tuesday, Feb. 26, and I never even left New York. That was the day Cardinal Dolan left for Rome to keep his very important appointment as a member of the College of Cardinals.
That morning, I had interviewed the cardinal briefly before the Mass he celebrated for archdiocesan employees at St. John the Evangelist Church in Manhattan. He invited me to bring a notebook and join him as he rode to JFK Airport that afternoon.
Actually, I had an opportunity to ask quite a few questions during the mid-afternoon chat. Typing up my notes this morning, I marveled at the cardinal’s gifts as a shepherd and as a communicator. Much of the interview holds up and fits together nicely a week later, no small feat considering the attention Cardinal Dolan and the rest of the world’s cardinals received in the interim.
The cardinal himself said he looked at the time before the conclave begins—and no official word on when it would begin was announced by CNY’s deadline this past Tuesday—as “a great time of Catholic pride and identity.”
He said he looks upon his interactions with the press, especially during a period such as this one, as part of his service to the Church of New York and to the universal Church.
“You don’t want to miss that opportunity,” he said. “You want to feel good about the Church. That’s one of our problems today. People don’t feel good about the Church.”
Of course, it’s also a time when the Church has received its share of bumps and bruises, some having to do with scandals and controversies of its own members, even prelates. Nothing new or extraordinary about that, the cardinal said. “We have that every day…We have all the winds and the waves. It’s like St. Peter walking on the water. As long as you keep your eyes locked on the Lord, you’ll be OK. That’s what I try to do.”
Drawing on thoughts of Pope John XXIII about reading the signs of the times, Cardinal Dolan said, “With every challenge in life, every difficulty, every joy, Jesus is telling us something. He’s giving us appropriate graces to do what he’s asked us to do. That all comes through at a time like this.”
It happens that Cardinal Dolan has been reading since Christmas the new book, “The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity,” by Robert Louis Wilken, the eminent Church historian at the University of Virginia.
“I find it particularly timely because what he is talking about is the whole development of the structure of wisdom and leadership and authority in the Church, the Magisterium, the role of the bishop and the role of the Bishop of Rome,” the cardinal said.
“It’s beautiful the way you can see the Holy Spirit leading the Church,” he added. “I found that amazingly insightful.”
The cardinal also said he has been reading Pope Benedict XVI’s three-volume set about Jesus of Nazareth throughout the past year and that he hoped that the pope emeritus would now have the opportunity to do further writing. “Wouldn’t that be great?” he asked.
Leading up to his trip, where one of his first acts was to bid Pope Benedict farewell, he thanked God “that we have a pope who had the humility and fortitude to make the decision he did.”
“What does that say about his trust in God, that God is in charge of the Church?” the cardinal said. “What does that say about the confidence that he has in his brother cardinals to make the right decision? What does that say about his own testimony, about the fact that it is not about him at all?”
“These are Gospel values that seem to be brilliantly radiating through the Church these days,” he said.
As he considered the magnitude of the responsibility before himself and the other members of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Dolan said he was buoyed by the seriousness and sense of duty and purpose being expressed by his brother cardinals. Nowhere does he see posturing or campaigning. He said he was looking forward to gathering in prayer with his fellow cardinals in a “very spiritually charged atmosphere.”
Although we can be tempted to look at this transition from a purely human point of view, the cardinal said it’s important to see it as “a great occasion of spiritual renewal, purification of the Church and time of intense prayer.”
“It’s almost like Pentecost again. The Vicar of Christ on earth is stepping aside, and we await a new one,” he explained. “It’s somewhat analogous to Ascension Thursday when Jesus himself, the Christ, ascended into heaven.
“In that moment of loss, sadness, confusion and dreaming and wondering and hoping, the Apostles came together in the company of the Blessed Mother and prayed. Their nine days of prayer, the first novena, were rewarded with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the supreme personal answer to every prayer. That’s the moment we are in now, and we can’t lose that.”
