February 4, 2011

Friday, February 4, 2011.

Holiness is like pornography. Because Justice Potter Stewart’s comment applies. As when you’re faced with pornography, when you’re faced with holiness, you know it.

I met a holy person once, and meeting Augustin Cardinal Bea was a blessing I cherish to this day. Two biographical facts back up my view, I think.

First, Pope Pius XII made Cardinal Bea his confessor. Of course, the seal of confession covers that relationship. But when I discovered how much of Cardinal Bea’s late writings were about the Jewish people, I found the possible connection irresistible.

Second: When the theologically conservative Pope John XXIII was inspired to convoke a new Vatican Council–opening Church windows which had long been tightly shut–the first person he told was Cardinal Bea. During the Council, Cardinal Bea not only played a major role in drafting Nostre Aetate, the document which declared that the Jewish people was not guilty in the death of Jesus Christ, he also pushed very hard to get it passed. John Borelli, an historian of Vatican II, is quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "It took the will of John XXIII and the perseverance of Cardinal Bea to impose the declaration on the Council."

But in the spring of 1964, not quite a year after my baptism, passage of the statement on the Jews did not look at all like a sure thing. I was both too angry and too hurt to be confirmed in the Church.

Then something happened. One night, I noticed a two-line Reuters dispatch saying that Cardinal Bea, whose efforts on behalf of Nostre Aetate I had been reading about, would be visiting Cardinal Cushing the next few days. At one a.m., I sat down and wrote Cardinal Bea a letter. First thing in the morning, I asked the librarian in my office how to address a cardinal and to help me find out Cardinal Cushing’s address. I filled in the blanks in my letter and mailed it.

In those days, mail wasn’t by pony express the way it is now, and the following morning I received a phone call from Cardinal Bea’s secretary, a Jesuit named Stefan Schmidt, saying that if the cardinal had to return to Rome the next afternoon, but if I could come up to Boston in the t morning, "his eminence would be delighted to confirm you." My boss, a lapsed Catholic, instructed me to take the rest of the day off  to hunt down a proper outfit–my arms completely covered, he explained. I laughed at the notion that my arms might be a problem for the cardinal who was in his late seventies, but bought an elegant white suit at Bendel’s and a big white hat to "top off" my proper outfit. The following morning, I flew up to Boston.

The man who walked slowly toward me in a "palatial" public room was bent over, physically an old man. But when he lifted his head to greet me, I saw his eyes--astonishingly clear eyes in a face road-mapped with wrinkles. I felt as though those eyes could see right inside people, yet they were heart-warmed. Declining to have his ring kissed, the cardinal invited me to sit. He sat down near me and asked me questions, some about me but also about my parents. He seemed not curious so much as interested in my Jewish background. Through an archway, I could see people waiting for an audience, yet our conversation went on and on until his secretary firmly urged us to proceed with the confirmation ceremony, and hastened us into Cardinal Cushing’s private chapel.

About the ceremony I remember only being surprised that the cardinal’s secretary seemed to be more familiar with it than the cardinal. I saw this as a sign of the forgetfulness which often accompanies age. But when told by his secretary to slap my face–which I knew was an integral part of the ceremony–the cardinal shook his head. A whispered debate ensued. Finally, the Cardinal nodded, apparently giving in. He came over to where I knelt at a rather ornate prie-dieu, raised his hand–and slowly caressed my cheek.

When the ceremony was over, instead of taking his leave, the cardinal led me back into the reception room. He asked if I would like a photograph of him, and had it sent for. Need I say I have it still? Then, apparently enjoying himself, he went further, and called for a photographer. Apparently there was one in house. In the picture of  the cardinal and me, my large white hat floats like a huppah over the two of us.

I saw the Cardinal again the following year, when I was invited to Fordham for him to celebrate Mass for me. But it’s something that happened during our third and last meeting that I need to share. By then I had heard thirdhand that the reason the cardinal spent so much time with me when first we met and later sent me several gifts, was that he had never confirmed anyone before. I was told that the esteemed scholar, who had never had a pastoral assignment, was very pleased to have been asked to do something outside his ordinary activities.

But to our final meeting. In 1967, like many Jews (though probably not many of them were, as I was then, also a Catholic), I flew to Israel to see the Wall. My trip home would include a stopover in Rome, so I shopped for a kipah to give the cardinal as a memento. Invited to visit him on Saturday evening, I showed up at his palace–this one really was a palace–promptly at the appointed hour. When I gave my name, I was immediately taken to him. He was alone, working, seated at a huge desk in a huge room with many doors. After he asked about my trip for a few minutes, not wanting to take too much of his tme, I presented my modest gift of two kipot. Both were the correct red, but neither was utterly plain. I had looked high and higher in Jerusalem, but the best I could come by were kipot with very narrow silver borders. He thanked me and said they were beautiful. Then, very softly, he asked, "But are they for boys?" I so wanted him to think they were not totally inappropriate. So I pointed to the skirted bottom half of his cassock and said, "Eminence, are those?"


He looked down at himself, then back at me–and laughed.  Loudly. Very loudly. Instantly, four doors opened and four Swiss guards came running in. Swiftly, still laughing, he sent them away. But I was stuck in the moment before. How could they have mistaken a laugh for a scream? Had none of those guards ever heard the cardinal laugh?

That made me sad–but later birthed a thought I’ve never told until now. Cardinal Bea was a holy man with a Texas-sized laugh he obviously didn’t get many opportunities to let loose on the world. Maybe, I thought, to be completely holy, you has to have laughter inside of you. Maybe the ability to laugh was the ultimate imitatio dei, because it allowed a holy person to be like God in that way, too. 

(Now I know why I started blogging–to have the chance to type imitatio dei for the first time in my life.)

Now, tell me. Have you ever met a someone with outsize goodness and wisdom, untarnished by a gloss of humility? Who possessed grace straight up? And who had a terrific laugh? If you have met someone like that, you know yourself to be as blessed as I.