‘In a manner of speaking,” the archbishop of New York “becomes the leader of the world, or at least of a world,” Catholic World magazine editorialized in 1939. “He has a greater opportunity to battle evil and to amplify good than any other one man except the Holy Father. There is no see in Christendom with such potentialities as New York.”
That world is in transition, to say the least. No less than the current leader of New York Catholics, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, a St. Louis native, has said that “in the public square, . . . the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over,” acknowledging both a changed culture and a more diverse Church.
Comments