Three days from now in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Bishop Ronald Hicks will be installed as the 11th archbishop of New York. The Illinois-born prelate will be the third archbishop of New York in a row who was originally from the Midwest; his predecessor Cardinal Timothy Dolan hailed from St. Louis, and Cardinal Edward Egan was originally from Chicago. 

Cardinal Dolan, who has overseen the archdiocese for the last 17 years, has also been a frequent contributor to America over the years, writing on everything from Catholic education to American politics to interfaith dialogue. (This literary editor was also happy to run his review of a biography of the Rev. John Tracy Ellis.) However, he wasn’t the first archbishop of New York to gain an America byline: That distinction goes to Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor, who oversaw the archdiocese from 1984 until his death in 2000.

Born in Philadelphia in 1920 and ordained for that archdiocese in 1945, Cardinal O’Connor served as a U.S. Navy chaplain from 1952 to 1979 (he accompanied the first Marine ground forces to go into Vietnam) and then as an auxiliary bishop of the military vicariate for four years. He was named the bishop of Scranton, Pa., in 1983, then was appointed archbishop of New York in 1984.

Cardinal O’Connor proved to be a colorful prelate, quick-witted and not eager to suffer fools. He was a good fit, in other words, for New York, a town whose most famous archbishop was known as “Dagger John.” A funny (if possibly apocryphal) tale of Cardinal O’Connor at a Jesuit ordination many years ago is a good example of his acerbic wit. After Communion, the Jesuit provincial got up to thank various people present, referring each time to a set of notes he kept pulling from his shirt pocket. When it came time for the final blessing, Cardinal O’Connor pretended to pull out his own notes and intoned:

May God bless you in the name of the…[checks notes] Father…the…Son…and…[checks notes] the Holy Spirit.

(He should not be confused with John Joseph O’Connor, the Georgetown professor who wrote for America approximately four billion times from 1932 to 1966; nor the John Joseph O’Connor who was bishop of Newark from 1901 until his death in 1927; nor the John Joseph O’Connor who was a U.S. Representative from New York; nor the John Joseph O’Connor who was the New York Times television critic for 25 years in the late 20th century. Don’t worry, though: they all showed up in a search of our archives.)

How did Cardinal O’Connor end up in the pages of America? In 1982, the magazine paired essays by him and by Gordon Zahn, the noted American sociologist and peace advocate who wrote for America himself many times over the years, on the topic of “Military Chaplains: Defining Their Ministry.” It would be hard to find two more diametrically opposed authors, at least on paper, seeing as then-Bishop O’Connor had spent most of his priestly ministry as a chaplain and began his essay by noting that “[m]y perspective on the military chaplaincy is colored, of course, by 27 years in Navy and Marine Corps uniform.” Zahn, on the other hand, was the co-founder of Pax Christi USA and one of the nation’s most outspoken pacifists. He started his contribution with a nod to that reality: 

There is a danger, I suppose, that an article about any aspect of the military chaplaincy written by an avowed (some might say “notorious”) Catholic pacifist will be dismissed in advance as just another “bum rap.” I hope this will not be the case here.

Zahn’s essay focused on the need to train chaplains to advise their soldiers when they are committing immoral acts, and to help them refuse to carry out military operations that violate international law or ethical norms in the course of their duty. Chaplains are (for better or for worse) embedded into the military hierarchy and are commissioned officers, he wrote; but they also have a responsibility to offer counsel that might contradict military commands. Given the destructive and indiscriminate power of many modern weapons, he wrote, part of a chaplain’s training should include “a thorough preparation for the presently neglected role of moral guide and counselor with respect to the problems presented by modern war and its weaponry.”

His argument had an echo in the news recently, as Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services said (in relation to President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions the United States might invade Greenland) that if U.S. troops are given an immoral order, “it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order.” Because Archbishop Broglio oversees all the Catholic chaplains in the military, this affirmation of the legitimacy of selective conscientious objection didn’t go without notice. 

In “A Chaplain Responds” from that same 1982 issue, Bishop O’Connor wrote extensively on the role and duties of a modern chaplain, noting the diversity of opinions and backgrounds among the Catholic chaplain corps; neither the stereotype of a priest blessing every military action—moral or not—nor the cliché of a peacenik secretly subverting the plans of the commanding officer reflected the reality of the close to 10,000 American Catholic priests, in his estimate, who had served as military chaplains. Questions about whether chaplains should be officers—or if the government should pay their salaries—boiled down to the question of effective ministry, he wrote.

Near the end of his essay, Bishop O’Connor offered “Some Random Thoughts on Prophets,” noting that a chaplain’s role sometimes called for prophetic resistance and counsel. But such a stance required careful discernment:

It is rarely easy to be a prophet. It is not always easy, perhaps, for a priest chaplain to distinguish between his own conscience and his own vanity. There can be times when he no more wants to confront a commanding officer than Moses wanted to confront Pharaoh, and when it is easy for him to beg off for the same reason Moses did.

What prophet, he asked, “was always 100 percent sure of what he was doing?” If a chaplain is to be truly one with the people to whom he belongs, he must know their doubts as well as their certitudes: “Far from being indifferent, or insensitive, or cocksure about war, for example, as the military chaplain is often pictured, he must suffer, and may even be destroyed by, the terribly personal existential agony of the true prophet.”

Bishop O’Connor stressed that a chaplain’s most important role was to provide spiritual succor and support—to be a shepherd as well as a prophet. “He must speak for God, for his church, for his people. His God may reveal Himself in ways most difficult to interpret, or, at times, seem not to reveal Himself at all. His church may speak through many voices, not all seeming to say the same thing, or may remain silent altogether,” he wrote. And whom did a chaplain serve?

His people—who are they? Recruits and generals, seamen and admirals, husbands, wives, parents, children, sweethearts. Diverse people with diverse needs, personal beliefs, official demands, all expecting of him what God’s people have always expected of their prophets: his blessing, his support, his approval, indeed, even his miracles, and also ready to rebuff him as prophets have always been rebuffed. It is to these people that he must minister and for whom he must often be a prophet in respect to the daily realities of their lives, far removed from the immediate concerns of war.

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Our poetry selection for this week is “Chosen,” by Hayley Simon. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.