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Boston Irish Reporter Names BC Alumnus Cardinal
Cushing "Boston Irish Person of the Century"
By Kelly McMahon
Published: Tuesday, January 16, 2001
Media
Credit: courtesy of The Boston Irish Reporter
BC
alumnus Richard Cardinal Cushing ´17 served as Archbishop
of the Diocese of Boston from 1944 until 1970.
In its January 2001 issue, The Boston Irish Reporter honored BC
alumnus Richard Cardinal Cushing ’17 by naming him the Boston
Irish Person of the Century. The issue concluded a series of articles
over the course of 2000 exploring the life of a different prominent
Irish-Americans from Boston.
According
to Ed Forry, publisher of The Boston Irish Reporter and BC alumnus,
“We started [the process of choosing the Boston Irish Person
of the Century] about a year ago. The twentieth century can be
called the Irish century. Irish immigrants really had a profound
impact on the city of Boston ... We came up with a list of people
who could be considered pivotal in giving Boston its Irish identity.”
Cushing,
a South Boston native, was chosen from a distinguished list of
candidates that included Rose Kennedy, Speakers of the House Tip
O’Neill and John McCormack, Mayor James Francis Curley and
John F. Kennedy.
“The
reason we chose Richard Cardinal Cushing is severalfold,”
Forry told The Heights. “A lot of people would look at Boston’s
Irishness and say ‘John F. Kennedy,’ but by the time
he came along, Boston already had its Irish imprint. And much
of that was because of Cardinal Cushing, who worked for the poor,
for the propagation of the faith, built parishes and schools …
We decided that he would be the person who embodied what it was
to be from Boston and be Irish,” he added.
Richard
James Cushing was born in South Boston in 1895 to Irish immigrant
parents. Despite his son’s frail health, Cushing’s father
encouraged him in his studies at BC High, then located in the
South End. Cushing graduated from BC High in 1914, receiving honors
for his outstanding work in Latin and Greek.
Cushing,
who was by then considering becoming a Jesuit, continued his education
at Boston College. His tenure at BC was interrupted in 1915, when
Germany’s sinking of the Lusitania prompted Cushing to enlist
in the U.S. Army. After being medically discharged for his asthma,
and graduating from BC in 1917, Cushing enrolled in St. John’s
Seminary. He was ordained a priest in May 1921.
After
Cushing served in three Boston parishes, Cardinal William Henry
O’Connell appointed him to the Society for the Propagation
of the Faith. In this position, Cushing was so successful in his
efforts to raise funds for the missions that Pope Pius XII named
him a monsignor in 1939. Two months later, Cushing was named an
auxiliary bishop.
In
1944, Cushing was promoted to Archbishop after the death of Cardinal
O’Connell. He proved to be quite different from his predecessor,
who had been called “Gangplank Bill” and “Dollar
Bill” due to his fondness for taking winter vacations. In
contrast, Cushing, who came from a working-class background and
lacked powerful ties to Rome, was perceived to have more in common
with the Catholics of Boston, whom he referred to as “the
salt of the earth.”
According
to Jack Dunn, BC director of public affairs, “Cardinal Cushing’s
father was a longshoreman. He talked like us, he went to BC like
us, he liked baseball like us and he told jokes like us. For the
first time, he was a reflection of who we were. He was like us.”
BC
historian Thomas O’Connor told The Boston Irish Reporter
that Cushing was known for staying connected to his constituents,
shunning elaborate clerical vestments and interacting with parishioners
of all classes and backgrounds. “Little concerned with ceremonies
or abstract theology, Cushing was interested in updating the Church
and making it relevant to the lives of ordinary people,”
O’Connor said.
The Archbishop’s compassion for the common man was also evident
in his social concern; during his years at the helm of the Boston
Church, Cushing raised over $300 million for charity.
Cushing
himself once stated that “the individual must first be cared
for, and after that the bureau, card index, department and report.
Modern philanthropy needs the spirit of St. Vincent DePaul, or
else the individual is lost in a maze of records, social processes
and philosophy.”
Cushing
is also credited with leading Catholics through a time of changing
social currents, from both inside and outside of the Church. “His
contribution was that he led a Church during its biggest transformation,
from a constituency who were poor immigrants to a constituency
of people who were American mainstream. His guidance and influence
played no small part in bringing that influence about,” Dunn
said.
In
addition, Cushing worked to improve relations between Catholics
and non-Catholics of different cultures and races. According to
The Boston Irish Reporter, Cushing broke many religious barriers
of his day by speaking at Protestant churches and wearing a yarmulke
while speaking at a synagogue in Brookline. Cushing stated that
he sought to end “all arguments with our non-Catholic neighbors
and all purely defensive talk about Catholicism.”
Cushing’s
25-year tenure as Archbishop of the Diocese of Boston spanned
both the Cold War and Civil Rights eras. He gave the invocation
at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, and three years later
mourned the nation’s first Catholic president by saying,
“my heart is broken with grief over his martyrdom for the
cause of the Free World.”
By
the end of the 1960s, Cushing began losing his health to emphysema.
In 1970, at the age of 75, Cardinal Cushing formally resigned
and was succeeded as archbishop by Humberto S. Medeiros.
After
Cushing’s death in November of 1970, Dunn remembers the entire
city of Boston shutting down for the cardinal’s funeral,
which over 500,000 people attended. Cushing Hall, the building
on BC’s Middle Campus that houses the School of Nursing,
is named in his honor, as is a residence hall on the Newton Campus.
“For
an entire generation of Boston College graduates, particularly
those from the turn of the century, Cardinal Cushing was a monumental
figure — a person who embodied all the qualities we hold
dear, a man of grace and stature and compassion, a man who distinguished
himself as a prince of the Church and in touch with the needs
of the poor,” Dunn said.
Forry
added, “Everybody [at BC] in those years knew him, everybody
did an impression of him, everybody admired him. He was a larger-than-life
figure. We kind of thought he could do anything.”
Eulogy
to John F. Kennedy
by Richard Cardinal Cushing Delivered on a National Television
Mass from Boston, November 24, 1963
IN
THE NAME of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.
My dearly beloved, friends in Christ and guests:
A shocked and stricken world stands helpless before the fact of
death, that death brought to us through a tragically successful
assault upon the life of the President of the United States. Our
earliest disbelief has slowly given way to unprecedented sorrow
as millions all over the earth join us in lamenting a silence
that can never again be broken and the absence of a smile that
can never again be seen.
For those of us who knew the President as friend as well as statesman,
words mock our attempts to express the anguish of our hearts.
It was my privilege to have been associated with John F. Kennedy
from the earliest days of his public life, and even prior to that
time, my privilege to have watched him mature with ever-expanding
responsibility, to have known some of the warmth of his hearty
friendship, to see tested under pain and loss the steely strength
of his character.
I have been with him in joy and in sorrow, in decision and in
crisis, among friends and with strangers and I know of no one
who has combined in more noble perfection the qualities of greatness
that marked his cool, calculating intelligence and his big, brave
bountiful heart.
Now all of a sudden, he has been taken from us and I dare say
we shall never see his like again. Many there are who will appropriately
pay tribute to the President as a world figure, a tribute due
him for his skill in political life and his devotion to public
service. Many others will measure the wide interests of his mind,
the swiftness of his resolution, the power of his persuasion,
the efficiency of his action and the courage of his conviction.
For me, however, it is more fitting and proper to recall him during
these days of mourning as husband and father, surrounded by his
young and beloved family. Although the demands of his exhalted
position carried him often on long journeys and filled even his
days at home with endless labors, how often he would make time
to share with his little son and sweet daughter whatever time
would be his own.
What a precious treasure it is now and will be forever in the
memories of two fatherless children? Who among us can forget those
childish ways which from time to time enhance the elegance of
the Executive mansion with the touching scenes of a happy family
life? Charming Caroline stealing the publicity, jovial John-John
on all four ascending the stairs of an airplane to greet his daddy
and a loving mother like all mothers joyfully watching the two
children of her flesh and blood, mindful always of three others
in the nurseries of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At the side of the President in understanding devotion and affection
behold his gracious and beautiful Jacqueline. True always to the
obligations of her role as mother, she has given new dimensions
to the trying demands of being America's First Lady. The pride
in her husband which he so eminently justified, was plainly reciprocated
in his pride of her. The bonds of love that made them one in marriage
became like hoops of steel binding them together.
From wherever men may look out from eternity to see the workings
of our world, Jack Kennedy must beam with new pride in that valiant
woman who shared his life, especially to the moment of its early
and bitter end. It will never be forgotten by her for her clothes
are now stained with the blood of her assassinated husband. These
days of sorrow must be difficult for her--more difficult than
for any others.
A Divine Providence has blessed her as few such women in history
by allowing her hero husband to have the dying comfort of her
arms. When men speak of this sad hour in times to come, they will
ever recall how well her frail beauty matched in courage the stalwart
warrior who was her husband. We who had so many reasons for holding
her person in a most profound respect must now find an even wider
claim for the nobility of her spirit.
One cannot think, my dearly beloved, especially one such as myself,
of the late President without thinking also of the legacy of public
service which was bequeathed to him by his name and his family.
For several generations in a variety of tasks, this republic on
one level or another has been enriched by the blood that was so
wantonly shed on Friday last. Jack Kennedy fulfilled in the highest
office available to him the long dedication of his family.
It is a consolation for us all to know that his tragic death does
not spell the end of this public service but commits to new responsibilities
the energies and the abilities of one of the truly great families
of America. What comfort can I extend to their heavy hearts today--mother,
father, sisters, brothers--what beyond the knowledge that they
have given history a youthful Lincoln, who in his time and in
his sacrifice, had made more sturdy the hopes of this nation and
its people.
The late President was even in death, a young man--and he was
proud of his youth. We can never forget the words with which he
began his short term as President of the United States: Let the
word go forth, he said, from this time and place, to friend and
foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation
of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined
by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage ...
No words could describe better the man himself who spoke, one
whose youth supplied an almost boundless energy, despite illness
and physical handicap, whose record in war touched heroic proportions,
whose service in Congress was positive and progressive.
It was against this personal background that he continued by saying:
Let every nation know . . . that we shall pay any price, bear
any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any
foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. This much we
pledge and more. All that the young President promised in these
words, he delivered before his assassination. He has written in
unforgettable language his own epitaph.
Two days ago, he was the leader of the free world, full of youth,
vigor and promise, his was a role of action, full of conflict,
excitement, pressure and change, his was a fully human life, one
in which he lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and was loved.
Now in the inscrutable ways of God, he has been summoned to an
eternal life beyond all striving, where everywhere is peace. All
of us who knew personally and loved Jack Kennedy--his youth, his
drive, his ideals, his heart, generosity and his hopes--mourn
now more for ourselves and each other than for him. We will miss
him; he only waits for us in another place.
He speaks to us today from there in the words of Paul to Timothy:
"As for me, my blood has already flown in sacrifice. I have
fought the good fight, I redeemed the pledge; I look forward to
the prize that awaits me, the prize I have earned. The Lord whose
award never goes amiss will grant it to me--to me, yes, and to
all those who have learned to welcome His coming." John F.
Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America, has fought
the good fight for the God-given rights of his fellow man and
for a world where peace and freedom shall prevail.
He has finished the race at home and in foreign lands alerting
all men to the dangers and the hopes of the future, pledging aid
in every form to those who attempted to misinterpret his words,
to misunderstand his country, to become discouraged and to abandon
themselves to false prophets. He has fulfilled unto death a privilege
he made on the day of his inauguration--a privilege in the form
of a pledge--I shall not shrink from my responsibilities.
Far more would he have accomplished for America and the world
if it were not for his assassination here in the land that he
loved and for which he dedicated and gave his life. May his noble
soul rest in peace. May his memory be perpetuated in our hearts
as a symbol of love for God, country and all mankind, the foundation
upon which a new world must be built if our civilization is to
survive.
Eternal peace grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light
shine upon him. In the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Ghost, amen.
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