(This month's dissent was foreshadowed in the Observer last year by the Rev. John Duffell, a Roman Catholic priest at the Church of the Ascension on the West Side, who told me "The archbishop has been the religious leader in New York for a very long time. I wonder if the cardinal really appreciates the value and importance of that position," He added that the role of the religious community is to make room for a moral dimension in the public debate. "In my opinion, that role has been somewhat diminished in recent years.")

Under Egan's predecessor, Cardinal John O'Connor, the archbishop of New York was considered one of the most high-profile positions in the city. While O'Connor had no role, of course, in dictating city policy, his voice was often sought after and listened to by mayors and other powerbrokers. Such extraordinary dissent from within the church, with charges that Egan overlooked "spiritual needs and concerns" of New York's clergy and Catholics, would have been startling to say the least under O'Connor. The accusation that Egan showed "unnatural fear of the media" would have been risible. O'Connor never met a camera he didn't like.

It is thus a testament to the merit of the charges, which were apparently written by priests and then posted on the Catholic news blog Whispers in the Loggia, that the complaints hardly registered outside the cardinal's Madison Ave residence.

There is a wide perception in the New York, and American, church that Egan is less attuned to his local archdiocese than he is with the inner workings of the Vatican. (That he left New York days after the Sept 11th attacks for a conference in Rome has been a lasting blemish on his record.) This month's letter, serious enough to hasten an official dismissal by Egan and a show of strength from his supporters, threatens to be another embarrassment as the cardinal approaches his 75th birthday, when he is required by church law to offer to the pope his resignation as archbishop.

His quick response (apparently reminding priests that he was a frequent visitor to hospitals, prisons and troubled parishes) could have less to do with defending his record in New York than with securing his reputation in Rome. Many priests in New York agree, under their breath, with church watchers in the Vatican that Egan really prefers Rome, where he served as a judge on the Sacred Roman Rota, a Vatican Court, for 14 years after teaching theology at the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City.

By rallying supporters and refusing to accept the criticism, Egan perhaps adds to his standing in the Vatican as an effective administrator with proven cost-cutting skills. It may not help his popularity quite as much, however, here in New York.

--Jason Horowitz

After writing about the bishop in this space last week, I was inundated with letters, e-mails and telephone calls from his many friends and parishioners, most of whom agreed with my contention that the bishop had been unjustly punished for sexual indiscretions in his past. Some 15 years ago, he privately confessed that he'd had several love affairs with adult women during the first two decades of his priesthood-a violation of his vow of celibacy. But when one of those women, now 34 years old, reopened the issue through a letter to Cardinal Edward Egan earlier this year, the bishop was removed from his parish, leading to his resignation.

It's important to remember that this is not a case of pedophilia, that the affairs took place between consenting adults. Of course, it's fair to argue that the power dynamic between a priest and a younger woman is far from equal, but some of those who might make such an argument didn't seem overly concerned about the power imbalance between a certain middle-aged President of the United States and a certain young intern some years ago.

Friends of the bishop confirmed to me details of an awful conversation between the papal nuncio-the Pope's representative in Washington, D.C.-and the bishop, which were first reported in Neal Travis' column in the New York Post . According to Mr. Travis and confirmed by several sources, the nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montavlo, told the bishop that he should leave New York and would never be able to celebrate Mass publicly again. An associate of the bishop said that based on what he'd heard about the meeting, he would describe the nuncio's tone as "atrocious"-except that the word somehow seemed too benign. It was impossible to tell whether the nuncio was acting on instructions from Rome or elsewhere, the bishop's friend said.

(Bishop McCarthy is making no public comment while his friends and parishioners lobby for his reinstatement.)

It's interesting to note that among the bishop's most stalwart allies are the friends and colleagues of the bishop's late mentor, Cardinal John O'Connor. The bishop served as O'Connor's secretary for years and was among the his most trusted aides-if anybody (besides the women involved) has a right to feel betrayed by the bishop's sins, it would be the late cardinal's friends. But they are among the bishop's strongest supporters and, according to sources, some have been quietly advising the bishop since his resignation.

Although nearly everyone involved in the archdiocese publicly denies any sense of a rift between Cardinal O'Connor's people and his very different successor, the McCarthy scandal has laid bare palpable tensions between the O'Connor camp and the incumbent cardinal. In fact, O'Connor's friends, allies and former colleagues constitute a virtual chancery in exile, and while they are without a champion (although Bishop McCarthy might have been one), they are not without clout, especially in the fields of public relations and charitable giving.

The treatment meted out to Bishop McCarthy-Cardinal Egan's abrupt order removing him from his parish for a sin to which he had confessed years before-has further strained relations between the late cardinal's friends and the current cardinal. And those animosities will do nothing to ease Cardinal Egan's attempts to reorganize, consolidate and otherwise reconfigure the Catholic Church's money-losing network of schools, health-care facilities and social-service providers.

He needs the good will of all New Yorkers, especially those who worked closely with O'Connor, whether as advisers, as fund-raisers or as boosters (former Mayor Ed Koch comes to mind). These are the people who rally to such causes as the Inner City Scholarship Fund, which underwrites Catholic-school tuition for poor children, and who sell tickets to fund-raising dinners. But many influential New Yorkers-Catholics and non-Catholics alike-believe their services or advice are unwanted; some, in fact, complain privately that phone calls from the cardinal's residence stopped the day O'Connor died more than two years ago.

Reconsidering the McCarthy case would go a long way toward healing some of the church's self-inflicted wounds. Failing that, Bishop McCarthy's friends at least deserve an explanation from those-whether based in New York, Washington or Rome-who insist that he is no longer qualified to serve his flock. If the bitter events of the last few months have demonstrated anything, it is that the Catholic laity simply will not take dictation from the church's hierarchy.

They believe their voices and opinions should count for something, and they're right.

Bishop McCarthy recently confessed that he'd had several inappropriate sexual relationships with adult women years ago; the admission came after one of those women-now 37 years old-informed Cardinal Edward Egan of the affair. The cardinal immediately removed Bishop McCarthy from his clerical duties. The bishop then resigned, and soon found his case included among the sexual scandals and crimes that have so terribly wounded the institutional church and many of its faithful.

I can't claim to know Bishop McCarthy, although I met him once and spoke with him twice by telephone when I was researching the life of his mentor, Cardinal O'Connor. But I do know many people who know the bishop well, and while the revelations about his past have shocked and saddened them, they insist that he's not just a good priest, but a great priest. And they've begun to question why his punishment is so severe, unrelenting and final.

The bishop's supporters are not alone. Even as Catholics condemn not only pedophiles in their rectories and schools but the scarlet-robed prelates who tried to suppress clerical crimes against children, some voices are being raised against overreaction and scapegoating-the inevitable byproduct of a frightened and ashamed hierarchy. Having been exposed as enablers (wittingly and unwittingly) of some predator priests, the church's leaders suddenly are determined to show just how tough they are. One strike, one violation of celibacy-even if committed years or even decades ago-and you're banished from the altar.

Forget compassion: Is this justice? The answer, clearly, is no, and Catholics are beginning to say so. Writing in the July 29-Aug. 5 issue of the Jesuit magazine America , Camille D'Arrienzo of the Sisters of Mercy criticized the bishops' adoption of what she called a "one size fits all punishment" for wayward priests. She spoke of an unnamed cleric who was suspended from his ministry in an all-girls' high school for no stated reason after a meeting with his bishop. Although nobody knows for sure, the assumption is that the priest was accused of sexual misconduct of some sort. After allowing that an accusation of pedophilia would require another kind of response, Sister Camille wondered: "Does the goodness, the generous self-sacrifice" in the years following the possible misconduct "count for nothing?"

That same question is being asked about Bishop McCarthy, whose indiscretions took place during the first 20 years of his 34-year career as a priest. During an interview with radio impresarioWilliam O'Shaughnessyon WVOX in late July, former Governor Mario Cuomo specifically cited the McCarthy case during a rumination on the church's handling of its sexual scandals. There is a difference, Mr. Cuomo said, between abusing a child and entering into a consensual relationship with an adult, "which is sinful and wrong," but should not be treated with the "same severity as the abuse of a child."

"There is a tendency to overreact in the punishment of such an act," Mr. Cuomo said. "It happened to a wonderful man who confessed to having an inappropriate relationship …. This man has been banished for all time; he can be a priest only covertly. That sounds to me like an extraordinarily difficult and cruel punishment imposed on somebody who had led a terrific life"-except, of course, for his sexual liaisons years ago.

Friends of the bishop have organized a campaign to have him restored to the rectory of Saint Elizabeth Seton, where he was a beloved and accessible spiritual leader in the mold of his friend, Cardinal O'Connor. The campaign has found its way into the public prints via Neal Travis' column in the New York Post , and in a series of articles about the bishop's fall in Gannett's Westchester-based daily, the Journal-News . It's not clear whether the bishop's allies will be successful, but their efforts certainly have gotten the attention of Cardinal Egan, who has denied having anything to do with Bishop McCarthy's resignation and has denounced suggestions that he and the bishop butted heads back in the days when they were working for O'Connor.

Whether or not Bishop McCarthy says Mass again in Saint Elizabeth Seton, there's a larger issue here. He has confessed to his sins, and has submitted to his superiors' judgment, however hasty and misguided.

His superiors in the church, however, have confessed to very little, and have yet to be punished for their offenses. And still they stand in judgment of others.

Members of the Catholic Church's hierarchy have acted with gross incompetence-that point is so clear that the bishops have few if any defenders even among the devout, and even among the vast majority of priests who are not and never have been child molesters. Good priests are as horrified as their congregations-and given that some of those congregations are in neighborhoods where no elite opinion-formers dare trespass, it's worth noting that Catholic priests continue to minister to the poor, the grieving and the forgotten, even as they're subjected to undeserved ridicule.

A priest friend of mine-whose name I won't mention because we were talking off the record-said with palpable sadness that he doesn't wear his clerical Roman collar when he ventures out in Manhattan these days. He's self-conscious, and more than a little angry with the bishops and archbishops who have dealt so miserably with this terrible problem. At Mass a couple of weeks ago, my friend apologized for the shame and scandal a few priests and bishops have brought on an institution so many lay people still look to for consolation, for inspiration and, yes, for moral and ethical guidance.

My friend and I talked a little bit about a mutual friend of ours, a priest whose job it is to help recruit and train young priests. "How would you like that job these days?" my friend asked. He talked, too, about the uncounted ways this scandal has changed the dynamic between parish priests and their congregations. "Look, I know guys who'd like to take kids to a ball game, to show interest in the lives of the kids in the parish. They can't do that now," he said. "And when you talk about vocations, priests are supposed to be examples for young men. But that's tough now."

Perhaps it would have been a little easier if Cardinal John O'Connor and Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago were alive. O'Connor was a terrific pastor and a so-so bureaucrat. He spent a lifetime confronting unpleasant truths regardless of the consequences, and very likely would not have responded in lawyerly fashion to allegations and cover-ups. It's the bureaucrats who've gotten the church into this mess, not the genuine pastors.

Cardinal Bernadin, you may remember, actually was accused of sexual abuse years ago by a onetime seminarian who was under the spell of the recovered-memory hucksters. One of Bernadin's close friends, writer and ex-priest Eugene Kennedy, recalled that the cardinal dispensed with the advice of lawyers and public-relations experts who urged all manner of spin-control tactics. Instead, he confronted a ravenous press corps, denied the charges and expressed sympathy for his accuser. The charge, it turned out, was false. Bernadin publicly embraced his accuser, who later died of AIDS.

That's leadership, but Bernadin and O'Connor-two very different archbishops with very different styles-are gone now, and too many of those in power act like middle managers rather than teachers and pastors, servants of the servants of God. Cardinal Edward Egan's homily on Palm Sunday had the right language and the right tone: He vowed that sexual abuse in the priesthood would be "wiped out," and he spoke with feeling about the crimes committed against children. But the messenger himself remains covered in shadow. He inherited a scandal in Bridgeport, Conn., and did not cover himself with glory when he had to deal with the consequences.

But at least the cardinal has not taken the low road of blaming the media-a journey his colleague in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, and others have undertaken at no small cost to their credibility. This is not a media-driven story; it's driven by sin, criminality and a shocking breach of trust.

As the scandal continues to unfold, as outraged lay people make it clear that they will no longer tolerate dissembling from their bishops, parish priests will continue to comfort, guide and teach-even as the larger world makes cruel jokes at their expense. They will continue to baptize the newborn, marry the young and bury the dead. And they'll do so for years to come, knowing that their way of life is open to question and even ridicule.

They knew when they were ordained that theirs would be a lonely calling. They had no idea just how lonely it would be.

Now more than a year into his tenure, the Cardinal is about to face a full-scale rebellion and a public-relations nightmare as he grapples with an annual deficit estimated at $20 million. With teachers at 10 Catholic high schools already walking picket lines, a sick-out at three other high schools is on the verge of mushrooming into a full-fledged strike that could shut down the archdiocese's 238 elementary schools and 55 high schools, affecting more than 100,000 students. And looming in the background is the near certainty of more school closings and a possible confrontation with the archdiocese's health-care workers, who staff 17 church-run hospitals and medical facilities in one of the country's largest health-care systems.

With the 377-member Lay Faculty Association out of the classroom and staging demonstrations outside the cardinal's midtown residence, the 3,600-member Federation of Catholic Teachers is preparing to join the association's strike. Michele MacDonald, the president of the union, told The Observer that the union's executive board very likely will call for a strike vote by members on Dec. 5.

"I would assume that we will recommend a strike if I don't see any movement by the archdiocese," said Ms. MacDonald, a grandmother and former nun who has taught in Catholic schools on Staten Island for the past 27 years. "The archdiocese is forcing us to take that route. Cardinal Egan feels he has a deficit to satisfy, and he's trying to do it on the backs of the teachers." Both Catholic school unions have been without a contract since September. The archdiocese reportedly has offered a 2 percent annual raise, but the teachers say the increase in pay would be more than offset by a 20 percent increase in the out-of-pocket costs of a new health plan. The union wants a larger wage increase-although it hasn't specified how much larger-and wants to keep the current health plan.

Monsignor Peter G. Finn, rector of St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers and a former spokesman for the archdiocese, defended the cardinal's stance. "The church and Cardinal Egan and everyone else are sharing in the pressures of the economic recession that we're in," he said. "We're all trying to deal with this as best we can."

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Cardinal, did not return calls for comment.

The archdiocese has been preparing for a showdown with its teachers' unions for several weeks. On Nov. 29, the archdiocese sent out a fax to its school principals, directing them to keep their schools open in the event of a strike in order to maintain negotiating leverage with the union. "If schools cannot function during a strike, our ability to negotiate a settlement you can live with and in terms of work rules is extremely limited," the fax read. "Teachers cannot [have their salaries withheld] if they go on strike and you close the school."

In some ways, the situation of the Catholic schoolteachers mirrors that of their public-school counterparts, who are also agitating for a raise. The chief executive (Rudolph Giuliani or Cardinal Egan) comes into office bent on reining in the fiscal excesses of his liberal predecessor (David Dinkins or Cardinal John O'Connor), resulting in much saber-rattling and ill will between union and management. But there are several key differences. For one, Catholic schoolteachers are paid far less than their public-school counterparts-the maximum salary for public elementary schoolteachers in New York is $70,000, as opposed to $37,010 for Catholic schoolteachers. For another, the city's finances are public, but the archdiocese's finances are not. (The archdiocese has said that its annual operating deficit is $20 million.) And for all the stylistic contrasts between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Dinkins in dealing with the city's unions, the difference could not be more extreme between Cardinal Egan and his predecessor, Cardinal O'Connor, who was known to act more like a union boss than a C.E.O. when dealing with his employees.

Of course, the single biggest flaw in any comparison between the archdiocese and any governmental or business organization is that the church's mission is not dictated-at least not in theory-by bottom-line economics. The city's Catholic schools-founded in the mid–19th century by the legendary Bishop John Hughes-have a special place in the hearts of the 2.4 million Catholics in the archdiocese. Many of them have become beloved neighborhood institutions, and now offer a refuge to low-income non-Catholics who attend parish schools in old Catholic neighborhoods. These schools often are the archdiocese's biggest money-losers, and they're often among the first to get hit when subsidies from the archdiocese are reduced.

Cardinal Egan, then, finds himself in a classic no-win situation. If he continues the status quo, the archdiocese will continue to bleed red ink, threatening its very existence. If he continues to close schools, he'll be criticized by those who believe the church's mission ought to supersede the bottom line.

Even as they concede that keeping schools afloat has been a costly affair, the Catholic schoolteachers continue to offer an argument that is more moralistic than economic. It's not easy for even the most skilled negotiator to produce a snappy reply, for example, to Ms. MacDonald's assertion that "we really have a cardinal who does not care."

"We know what Cardinal Egan says about the bottom line, but what about the people who have given their life blood to make the system what it is?" Ms. MacDonald said. "If they close these and drive teachers away, they might as well close the Catholic Church-they're destroying it from within. People said that Cardinal O'Connor gave away the store, and he may have, but he saved a tremendous number of souls. Cardinal Egan is losing souls."

A Fine Balance

But there are also many people of faith within the archdiocese who feel that Cardinal Egan is making necessary sacrifices, and who defend his cost-saving measures as necessary in the wake of his predecessor's unwillingness to find a balance between soul-saving and book-keeping. "I'm not sure many people realize how serious the financial problems are that Cardinal Egan has faced," said a former pastor. "His predecessor did not have much restraint in spending money, which caused a massive deficit. The cardinal has gone after it heavily, and of course the people directly affected are unhappy, but it's a job he's got to do."

The points of contention in this case are still fairly serious. And as of press time, the two sides were not talking to each other.

While the cardinal's stand very likely will bolster his reputation for fiscal responsibility, there is also a risk that he will be see within the church as anti-labor, a charge to which the cardinal has been sensitive in the past. In August 2000, three months after Cardinal O'Connor's death, New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse reported on Cardinal Egan's cool relations with labor during his time as bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The article cited as one example a contract dispute at a Catholic hospital in Bridgeport "when Bishop Egan was on the board."

He wasn't.

Cardinal Egan was sufficiently incensed to call attention to the error at that year's Labor Day mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, as aides handed out a packet of papers that included a copy of the Times clip. An attached note read, "The Most Reverend Edward M. Egan has never served on the Board of Saint Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport, or even on a committee or discussion group connected with the hospital. The Hospital has no unions." More than a year later, at an event last October organized by the New York City Central Labor Council, the cardinal again assailed Mr. Greenhouse in an address to the assembled union chiefs. "I would say he's sort of obsessed with this," said one labor leader who was at both events.

I met him in the very beginning, when he first came to New York as the new archbishop. He gave a speech in which he said that abortion was "the Auschwitz of American life." I heard this, and I wrote to him immediately and said that I thought it was very improper to use words like "Auschwitz" to describe abortion. In the United States, I said, a woman can have the child, put the child up for adoption or have an abortion-there are several possibilities. In Europe, for a Jew, we had no possibilities. As a Jew, you were destined for death.

He was very touched by that, I think, and he wrote an essay in the newsletter of the Anti-Defamation League explaining what he meant by that. It was very important to him.

Not long after that, he decided to go to Israel. He went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and he wrote "A Note from Yad Vashem," which was also published. He stressed the horror of the Holocaust and said that it is a Jewish tragedy and that we have to be careful how we use language in relation to the Holocaust.

We had an ongoing and very close relationship after that. We would visit each other and talk over the problems of our communities. Sometimes, when there were confrontations between the Catholic and Jewish communities, I would go to him, because I knew he would understand. This was an ongoing thing. He talked to Jewish audiences, and encouraged me to teach in a Catholic seminary. He was also very much interested in programs about education and the presentation of the New Testament and Judaism.

Once, the Cardinal was invited by some group to go down to Argentina and give a talk. He asked me if I had ever heard of the group. I had, I told him, and I knew them to be a little peculiar. They were a right-wing group. This was certainly not the sort of group that had ever been particularly open or friendly towards the Jewish community. When I told him this, the Cardinal asked me whether I wouldn't come with him. So I did.

After he addressed the group, he was invited to speak at a Mass in the cathedral in Buenos Aires. I remember that in his speech, O'Connor really gave it to the people about anti-Semitism during Mass, during the homily. He told them a Hasidic story about Jews in Poland who were taken to the woods to be killed, to be shot, and one father covers his child. So this child is saved, but when he emerges from the woods and goes to his neighbors for help, covered in blood, they tell him: "Get out, Jew." This happens a number of times. Finally, the boy appears on the doorstep of an old woman, and when she asks him who he is, he says that he is Jesus. She believes him and takes him in, and he is saved that way. It created such a reaction there.

The Cardinal was also a personal friend during moments of great agony. I lost a daughter in a car accident, and it took me a long time to recover. Whenever we would meet after that, we would talk about it. He would say a word or touch my arm. When he talked to me, it was as a friend. He was not the Cardinal, he was a pastor listening to someone in pain. He would also remember my daughter, Myriam, every February at Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. He never forgot to mention her and say a prayer for her. I once even got a call from a Catholic friend of mine in Rome. He had been at a meeting with O'Connor, and at this meeting he had mentioned Myriam. In Rome! [Pauses.] That was precious.

Parading for Israel

A political activist and former president of the Jewish Community Relations Council, Martin Begun was a witness to Cardinal O'Connor's fierce dedication to the State of Israel. In 1998, Mr. Begun brokered a historic and symbolically important agreement for the Cardinal to make an appearance at that year's Salute to Israel Day Parade.

I remember when I went to see Cardinal O'Connor in his First Avenue office. It was a meeting that came at a pretty rough time for me personally. My mother had just passed away a week or two before. I guess the Cardinal knew that-he had already sent me a note, before we met, expressing his condolences-and when I came, he took both my hands and told me how sorry he was.

So we sat there in his office, with Father Pat Loughlin, who was the liaison to community-based Jewish groups, around a coffee table. The Cardinal was immediately very disarming, joking around. Father Loughlin, it turned out, had forgotten his collar. So, of course, the Cardinal, being a former chaplain in the Navy, pretends to scold him for being out of uniform. He was joking, of course, but that got us all to laugh. It lightened things up. The Cardinal talked about all sorts of things-New York, what he wanted to do here, and those sorts of things. He also told me, very generously, that I should always call him if he could ever help us out with anything.

Before this meeting, I had discussed the idea with my colleagues of inviting the Cardinal to the Israeli Parade. It was an unusual idea-it would have been the first time a Cardinal had attended the event. Now, the meeting was going so well that I decided to do it. So as the meeting was drawing to an end, I said, with some trepidation, "I would very much like to extend an invitation to Your Eminence …. " Before I even finished he said, "I would love to." He turned to Father Loughlin and told him to make sure that his schedule would be free. His enthusiasm at that point was such that I decided to go for broke-I asked him if he would consider getting some Catholic students in marching bands to participate in the parade. He not only agreed, but said that he would help in any other way he could. I think Father Loughlin was the only one who might not have been delighted, because his workload was doubling by the minute. But I was thrilled.

An Historic Apology

Howard Rubenstein is the head of Rubenstein Associates.

I had been doing some publicity work for the Inner City Scholarship Fund, and we were doing really well. And then he asked me to join the fund's board-there aren't many Jewish people on it, maybe one other at the time. I got really friendly with him, and I joined him at some of the schools he visited. I became very, very enthusiastic about what he was doing, and what I was doing. I encouraged clients to give money to the fund, and many did.

Parallel to this, we were about to do the dedication of our new building at the Holocaust Museum here in New York. I suggested to Manhattan District Attorney Bob Morgenthau, another founder of the museum, that we invite the Cardinal to speak. Some of the Orthodox Jewish people fought it. They were saying, "He's Catholic, there were some problems with Catholics during World War II, the Holocaust period." They were pretty vocal, but it had nothing to do with the Cardinal personally. Bob Morgenthau and I overruled everybody. We just said, "It's done." And they said, "Well, maybe he shouldn't say a prayer." And we said, "He'll say whatever he wants to say." Then I spoke to him, and I suggested that this is an opportunity to say whatever he cared to say, in any format that he wished.

He came to that dedication, and he delivered the first speech I ever heard issuing an apology to the Jewish community for what happened during the Holocaust. The handful of people who resisted his participation thanked him and thanked me and thanked Bob Morgenthau for standing up for what we thought was right. I loved that man from that moment on. I always liked him, but I loved him for what he did that day.

'I Haven't Forgotten'

As a religion writer for The New York Times , Ari Goldman covered Cardinal O'Connor from 1983 to 1993. Mr. Goldman, author of The Search for God at Harvard and Being Jewish, is now a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

In 1995, my mother was in the last stages of battling cancer. She was in Sloan-Kettering [Cancer Center], where they were aggressively treating her, but it became clear there was nothing more they could do. My stepfather and my brother and I looked for the best place for her, and it turned out to be a Catholic hospice in the Bronx called Calvary. We learned that Jews are good at keeping people alive through aggressive treatment-that they knew how to save sick people-but Catholics were good at providing for the dying. We were an Orthodox family and wanted her in a Jewish environment, but nothing came close to Calvary Hospital, run by the Archdiocese of New York.

Before bringing my mother there, we wanted to make sure she would be in a comfortable environment. We met with social workers and other staff, who arranged for the crucifix to be taken down in my mother's room and provided kosher food. We were a family in crisis, and it was like the whole hospital was turned over inside-out for my mother's comfort. The medical director greeted us at the door and saw my mother to her room.

A few days later, I was in a quiet moment with the medical director, and I said, "This is the most amazing facility I've ever seen. My mother is as comfortable as she could be."

And he smiled and said, "It's not every day that the Cardinal calls."

That blew me away. There are 17 Catholic hospitals with something like 1,300 beds in the Archdiocese of New York. And Cardinal O'Connor knew that Ari Goldman's mother was moving into one of those beds in the Bronx.

Six months after my mother died, I got a personal note from the Cardinal. Remember, I was no longer a Times reporter. He had no reason to be nice to me. He owed me nothing. But I received this personal note, which I saved. The Cardinal wrote: "The loss of a parent is so hard …. We often get a lot of attention when we lose a parent, then six months goes by, and everyone forgets, but you don't forget. I haven't forgotten either." [Pauses.] There are 2.3 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York, and I'm a Jew, and he writes that kind of letter to me.

Extraordinary Sensitivity

Rabbi Michael Miller, the longtime head of the Jewish Community Relations Council and a member of the Orthodox Caucus, partnered with Cardinal O'Connor on a number of high-profile interfaith endeavors. "He was a pastor to all New Yorkers," the rabbi said. "He was our cardinal. Jewish New Yorkers felt that close to him."

In November 1988, we held a 50th-anniversary event for the commemoration of Kristallnacht , when the Nazis attacked Jewish shops in prewar Germany, and we invited the Cardinal to be our keynote speaker. I don't know how many communities would invite their cardinal or bishop to be their keynote speaker for an event commemorating the Holocaust. But Cardinal O'Connor was a cherished friend by then.

The commemoration was held at Congregation Kehilath Jeshuren, on 85th Street between Park and Lexington, an Orthodox synagogue. So the Prince of the Church in New York was addressing a subject matter regarding the Holocaust in an Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan. There were so many aspects to this event and his participation in it that were unique. Foremost was his speech. I recall quite vividly how he referred to himself as a "spiritual Semite." It was remarkable. I wouldn't presume to try to explain why he felt that connection to the Jewish community, but he clearly felt a kinship.

Also, if I remember correctly, the Cardinal was dressed in his black tunic and his red belt and his hat, and, of course, a big gold cross. He tucked the cross into his tunic. It was a measure of his sensitivity. I think that was a display of the measure of the man. He always seemed to know what to do around us. He just possessed extraordinary sensitivity.

To me, he was a quintessential fatherly figure. He was someone with whom I felt very comfortable talking through issues, as if he were my rabbi, talking through personal concerns. I always felt very much at ease in his presence. That was a gift he had.

Rachel

Rachel Fader is a 12-year-old girl from California, the great-niece of Sandi Merle, a midtown resident who is on the media commission of the New York Board of Rabbis. Ms. Merle was a friend of the Cardinal, and she turned to him for comfort when Rachel was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in 1998. Rachel started writing to the Cardinal after her diagnosis, and finally met him in New York. Their correspondence continued until the Cardinal's death.

We went to New York to see him. We were in his office, waiting, and then I heard a voice from outside the office saying, "I hear there's somebody named Rachel waiting for me in the other room." And I knew it was him. He came in and saw me and hugged me for such a long time. He brought me over to the window, and he was pointing out all the things you could see from the window-the Chrysler Building and the other buildings. He asked me how school was, and what I was doing in extracurricular activities. He spent over an hour with us, and that was so surprising, you know? It was wonderful talking to him, and he was such a wonderful person. He seemed so happy to see me, and I was so happy to see him. I loved being in that room and talking to him, because he was a great listener. It was a wonderful experience.

Before we left, he gave my mom a really beautiful kiddush cup. And he gave me a replica of the Statue of Liberty and a medallion with his coat of arms on it. I have it in my room now. It's in a red velvet case.

I wrote him a letter about how wonderful it was that two people from two different religions could be such wonderful friends and share so many things in common. I had thought, since he is a Cardinal very involved in his religion, I thought maybe we would have a lot of differences. But it actually turned out that I learned a lot about the things that Jews and Christians have in common. And from being with him I learned not just the technical religion stuff, but about people interacting with each other. I think that was pretty nice.

I think about him often. I think about the wonderful time we had together, and I replay scenes in my mind from when we met. Sometimes it makes me sad, but he's not gone from me. He may have left the world, but he didn't leave me. I have a picture of him on my desk, and I look at it often and I think about him. Sometimes, you know, when I'm having a bad day, I talk to him and he'll help me through it.

Ellen Cohen is Rachel's mom.

I wrote several letters of my own, thanking him for the Mass he said for Rachel and for showing such interest in her. Eventually, I wrote to him about something I thought he might want to know about me. My father is my Aunt Sandi's brother. They come from an Orthodox Jewish family. He married my mother, who comes from an Irish-Catholic family. My parents divorced when I was 2, and I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school until 10th grade and later converted to Judaism. I thought he should know that. I wrote to him about that, and in response he wrote a beautiful letter of acceptance to me, and ended with him saying that he understood that this is something I thought that God wanted for me, and the best thing I could do is be the best Jew I could be.

He really was a refuge for us. I still feel his presence, and I know he will always be with us.

Comforting the Afflicted

Former Mayor Ed Koch

The Cardinal was extremely important to me during the corruption crisis [in the mid-1980's, when several city politicians were found guilty of theft and other crimes]. I went into a state of what I believe was clinical depression. I couldn't discuss it with anybody or go to a psychiatrist, because nobody wants the Mayor to be perceived as nutty. [Laughs.] I had it all bottled up. My fear was that people would think I was corrupt. I didn't have wealth. Whatever I did, I did because the people believed me and believed I was honest. I thought to myself, "Will the people think I'm dishonest?" I couldn't stand it. I thought of suicide. I couldn't get up in the morning. I loved my job, but I could hardly move. I was lying in bed on Sunday, and there was a call from the Cardinal, who said, "Ed, I know you feel terrible, and that you're suffering so. But everybody knows you're an honest man." Now, I had never discussed this with him. But he knew intuitively what I was going through. I was amazed. My own family didn't know. My sister said later, "Ed, why didn't you tell us?" I couldn't. The Cardinal intuitively knew, and he said to me, "There's nothing you have to worry about." I said, "Oh, Your Eminence, I can't tell you how much this call means to me." And he said, "Oh, it's nothing." And I said, "Oh, yes. The Lubavitcher rebbe didn't call me."

I attended the cathedral for a memorial on the first anniversary of his death. Cardinal Egan asked a dozen people to go with him down to the crypt. I did, and I was shocked. On a tiny ledge in front of the coffin area beneath his name were three pebbles. That means three Jews had been there to honor him and thank him. I told Cardinal Egan, "From now on I'm going to carry pebbles, because if I had had one, I'd have put one there."

Pebbles in the Crypt

Sandi Merle , Rachel Fader's great-aunt

When I go to the crypt, I leave a stone. Jews do that for two reasons: No. 1, that we are not forgotten. And No. 2, that's the way we build a monument, stone by stone by stone.

There was a reception in the Cardinal's memory sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society and the Jewish Community Relations Council, and one of the speakers was Ed Koch. And he said that he was at the crypt on May 3 [2001, the first anniversary of the Cardinal's death] and he saw three little pebbles on the ledge, so he figured that three other Jews had been there before me. I didn't say a thing, and Mary Ward, the Cardinal's sister, started to cry, but she was smiling at the same time. We had visited Oskar Schindler's grave in Israel together, and we picked up some pebbles from the area around the grave, and I put one there each time I visited the Cardinal. May I live long enough to fill up that ledge.

From Full of Grace: An Oral Biography of John Cardinal O'Connor © 2001.

Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae;

vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve.

Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Evae,

Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes

in hac lacrimarum valle.

This curious and, in a place designed to reaffirm faith, even unbelievable image was visible, fleetingly, to those congregants whose needs for spiritual comfort were addressed not by hymns and prayer but by the soothing presence of television screens in the great Gothic cathedral. Somebody hidden in a control room ordered another view of this startling image, and before long the monitors flashed another picture, this one taken from behind the President, showing his hands grasping a program with the words for the hymn printed in Latin. He was not, it turned out, singing "Salve Regina" from memory, but his fluency in the traditional language of the deceased's faith and his own profession was mightily impressive, and shamed practicing Catholics like myself for whom the words were a jumble. As an affirmation of Catholicism's place in American society, it surely was a poignant image. In the lifetime of many of the white-haired men on the altar, Catholic Al Smith was dismissed as unfit for the presidency because of his affection for Latin hymns, and another, John F. Kennedy, was forced to remind skeptics that he regarded the U.S. Constitution and canon law as entirely separate entities.

Many American Catholics regard themselves as members of an institution about which the most dreadful things may be said without fear of expulsion from polite society. There is, surely, some anecdotal evidence to support such a view, and, indeed, while the press dutifully reported the presence of political power in the cathedral on May 8, the absence of many cultural and media icons–the image-makers and opinion-enforcers–was painfully evident. (Iconic status would exempt the formidable presence of Catholics among the working press, who could be identified by their inability to resist murmuring prayers or crossing themselves when prompted. This breach of professional protocol may be the equivalent of cheering in the press box; then again, it surely is preferable to the conduct of those who chatted into cell phones while the faithful prayed for the deceased's soul.)

It is from those whom Father Joseph O'Hare, president of Fordham University, once described as "our social betters"–the city's cultural and media elite–that Catholics feel the sting of condescension, if not outright hostility. The gathering together of so much political power in tribute to an American cardinal may well be described as a milestone, but to conclude then that Catholicism has triumphed over its skeptics in America would be too hasty a judgment. Bill Clinton may have studied under the Jesuits at Georgetown University, the only president to earn a degree from a Catholic institution, but among some of his future dinner companions in New York, Catholic education remains a sign of primitive intellect and, ironically enough, evidence of sexual repression.

The demonstrations of grief over Cardinal O'Connor suggested that for all his defiance of the times, he had earned a place in the hearts of ordinary New Yorkers. The ceremony that celebrated his life and commended his soul to eternity should have demonstrated to critics the complexity of the American Catholic Church. In the front pews, listening as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston declared that the Church always would be "unambiguously pro-life," were the pro-choice Catholic Governor of New York, George Pataki, and the pro-choice, Catholic-educated Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, whose reputed flouting of the seventh commandment have been the subject of some commentary in recent days. Somewhere behind the Mayor sat Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a pious man and a daily communicant who embraced abortion rights during his failed campaign for Governor in 1998. An observer trained only in cultural stereotypes of Catholicism might well have wondered that they dared show their faces at such an event, or that the rolling thunder of some dissent-quashing bishop did not shame them into a strategic retreat. Instead, they were greeted as everyone else was: as sinners requiring redemption.

It was not the display of earthly power, but the demonstration of human complexity, that made Cardinal O'Connor's funeral Mass a New York event. Unambiguous as the Church has every right to be on moral issues, its glorious multiculturalism, its tensions and contradictions, its majesty and its failings, all were evident to discerning eyes. In his life, John O'Connor was a man who defied conventional labels. At his funeral, the Archdiocese he led showed that it, too, will never fit easily into the preconceptions of others.

Johnny, they hardly knew ye.

After nearly 16 years at the helm of the New York Archdiocese, 79-year-old Cardinal O'Connor is preparing for the next stage of his life. Ailing, perhaps more than we know, he has made it clear that somebody new will stand in his place sometime soon. No Cardinal-Archbishop of New York has ever actually retired; they held their positions until summoned to service by an authority higher than even the Pope. Under new rules, however, bishops retire at 75 unless granted an exemption (as Cardinal O'Connor was). Even the exceptions, however, rarely serve beyond age 80, which the Cardinal will be in January.

So, like two-term Presidents approaching their last year in office, the Cardinal has had the unique opportunity to read assessments of his career written in the past tense, and the archdiocese he leads is preparing ever so subtly for a transition. As those retrospectives have piled up in recent months, it would seem, at last, that some people are getting it right: Cardinal O'Connor, son of working-class Philadelphia, has been an extraordinarily complex clergyman, adamant as well as ecumenical; hard-edged and sentimental, a man who built bridges to such seemingly unlikely allies as the Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Koch, Elie Wiesel and union leader Dennis Rivera. Thankfully, we have come a long way since that paragon of toleration, Gloria Steinem, could say (without apparent fear of contradiction from her equally open-minded peers) that the two worst things about New York were AIDS and Cardinal O'Connor.

He did take some time, it must be said, to get in tune with the music of New York. On the job only a few months, he inserted himself into the 1984 Presidential election, in which the Democrats ran a New York Catholic who favored abortion rights, Geraldine Ferraro, for Vice President after another New York Catholic who favored abortion rights, Mario Cuomo, became a national star at the party's convention. It was a clumsy moment, and it sounded to some that the Cardinal was playing partisan politics. Amazingly, few seemed to think that the Cardinal would be equally as harsh on Republican Catholics who supported abortion rights (as, in later years, he surely was).

Critics at the time said the Cardinal needed a refresher course in the separation of church and state-as memory serves, one newspaper spoke darkly about revoking the Archdiocese's not-for-profit status if the new Cardinal did not cease and desist from political pronouncements. However indelicately His Eminence handled this episode, he at least was too diplomatic to point out that the keepers of church-state relations generally lead the applause when clergy speak out for what are deemed progressive causes.

From that moment, the caricature of Cardinal O'Connor as a right-wing ideologue was set in stone among those who claim that they couldn't possibly be anti-Catholic because, after all, they just love Anna Quindlen, and isn't she, you know, one of them? Such people chose not to notice that as he grew more comfortable in his role and more knowledgeable about the city, the Cardinal became one of New York's most eloquent voices on behalf of the poor (remember them?), a man who used his pulpit to condemn Republican social service cuts in the early 1990's, who demanded better, more accessible health care, and who reaffirmed the Catholic Church's incredible commitment to the education of poor, non-Catholic New Yorkers in some of the city's most forlorn communities.

Cardinal O'Connor served in the U.S. Navy as chief of chaplains and achieved the rank of rear admiral, but he was extremely dubious about the Gulf War, and, on matters of military spending, he sounded like a conservative's parody of that old World War II bomber pilot, George McGovern. My friend Chris Franz of the Staten Island Register reminded me that in 1980, then-Bishop O'Connor had a leading role in writing a pastoral letter on war and peace from the American Catholic hierarchy to its flock. With Bishop O'Connor's active participation, the letter not only questioned the very morality of nuclear deterrence, but called on Catholics working in the defense industry to consult their consciences in light of the bishops' letter.

Such is the man who led New York's Catholics into the new century. This Christmas, he will be on the minds and in the hearts of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Yes, the murder rate is still down 67 percent from where it was six years ago, and, of American cities with populations over 100,000, New York still ranks as the safest. Indeed, there is no doubt that New York was the success story of urban America in the 1990's. (Even the embattled President's embattled wife wants to piggyback on New York's success to begin her next life.) But memories are short, and all it takes is a small hike in crime to strike a blow against the public perceptions of the city. A few grisly tabloid headlines, a few rats in the subways and New Yorkers may find that the good will of the rest of the world is only skin deep. And while good will may be intangible, the economic downside of a higher crime rate is very real. Corporations, tourists and would-be residents would quickly find other cities in which to invest their money.

New York is not yet in any danger of slipping back into David Dinkins-era dysfunction, when murder was high and morale was low. But even a modest bump in homicide demands an immediate response. While Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's imminent run for the United States Senate might carry the downside of distracting him from local matters, his candidacy is also the ultimate insurance. For Mr. Giuliani cannot let his sterling record on crime become blemished just in time for the race of his life.

Moskowitz for City Council

With so many members of the City Council vying for the "Political Hack of the Century" award, it is heartening to see that two smart, assertive women are battling for the Upper East Side's seat in the election to be held on Tuesday, Nov. 2. The Democrat, Eva Moskowitz, 35 and personable, almost won the seat two years ago, losing to the incumbent Republican Andrew Eristoff. Her opponent this time is Reba White Williams, a feisty 63-year-old Republican who works for a mutual fund company of which her husband, David, happens to be chairman. They are vying for the Fourth Council District, a long, snaking territory that includes the so-called Silk Stocking District, i.e., the Upper East Side from Fifth Avenue over to Second Avenue.

Each woman has made a decent case as to why she should be elected to finish out the term of Mr. Eristoff, who left to become Mr. Giuliani's Commissioner of Finance. The New York Times reports that Ms. Moskowitz, a former City University of New York professor, has taken progressive stands such as supporting charter schools, opposing tenure for public school principals and being open to privatizing homeless shelters. She also worked with Prep for Prep, which prepares minority students for elite private schools. Ms. Williams, meanwhile, a former member of the city's Arts Commission, has shown moxie in hooking corporations up with public schools. She also has money on her side: she will spend $900,000 to Ms. Moskowitz's $250,000.

In a tough race, The Observer endorses Ms. Moskowitz for City Council because of her ability to connect with New Yorkers, her passion for education, and what certainly appears to be an air of forthright common sense that reflects the best of the district she hopes to represent.

John Cardinal O'Connor: Get Well Soon

After a three-week absence, John Cardinal O'Connor returned to the pulpit in St. Patrick's Cathedral on Oct. 24. There was no disguising the gravity of his recent illness–characteristically, His Eminence made light of it–but his very presence in the cathedral inspired hope. As spiritual leader of the New York Archdiocese's 2.3 million Catholics, as a voice for social justice and as a tireless worker for Catholic-Jewish relations, Cardinal O'Connor is one of the city's great figures at the turn of the century.

In his 15 years as one of the nation's foremost clerics of any denomination, the Cardinal has been controversial and colorful. His opinions are not always greeted with approval. But there can be little doubt that this son of working-class Philadelphia has been a tremendous force for good. Several weeks ago, as Jewish New Yorkers celebrated the High Holy Days, the Cardinal wrote a letter to prominent Jewish leaders that contained an eloquent and heartfelt apology for wrongs visited upon Judaism in the name of Christianity. Jewish leaders like Elie Weisel published it in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times .

And it has been during the Cardinal's tenure that New York discovered one of its hidden treasures–the sprawling network of Catholic schools that has been a godsend for thousands of poor, non-Catholic children in some of the city's toughest neighborhoods. Once considered parochial in the pejorative sense of the word, New York's Catholic schools under the Cardinal's leadership have emerged as models for quality education.

There is talk that the Cardinal may retire next year after he celebrates his 80th birthday. Until then, it is a source of comfort to know that he indeed will be back. Again and again, we hope.

In this gut-buster of a holiday season, when the fury of snatch, grab and yank of merchandise off the counters approaches a demented bacchanalia, the life of Dorothy Day has an astringent meaning for us. If she isn't being taken seriously, she ought to be.

Sometimes she is yoked with Mother Teresa, but the two women weren't alike. Mother Teresa was a European figure. Dorothy Day was American, a combative New Yorker to the end. The good Albanian nun seemed to offer the out-of-control materialist a means of buying forgiveness for his gluttony; Dorothy Day accepted contributions for her soup kitchens, too, but writing out checks to the 100 neediest wasn't enough. "It is no use turning people away to an agency, to the city or the state or the Catholic Charities," she said. "It is you yourself who must perform the works of mercy. Often you can only give the price of a meal, or a bed on the Bowery. Often you can only hope that it will be spent for that. Often you can literally take off a garment if it only be a scarf and warm some shivering brother."

You must give "personally," she preached. It must be a "personal sacrifice." She understood that many a recipient of clothes or money or food would trade them for drugs, but so be it. What drove her nutty was converting the poor, the sick and the maimed in body and spirit into "cases" and "clients." Giving was as much for the giver as for the givee, and thus it had to be personal, skin touching, eye meeting eye in an act of mutual embrace.

The advocatus diaboli , whose role in the canonization process is to bring up everything of derogatory nature in the life of the person proposed for sainthood, won't have to look far for material with Dorothy. She was a modern woman at the dawn of our modernity, one of the first to fall into the traps laid for us by the rolelessness of 20th-century social freedom.

The woman went through various forms of hell before she got her first peek at heaven when she embraced the Catholic religion. She had the experience of lying on the abortionist's couch, waiting for the father of the fetus, an alcoholic, itinerant newspaperman she'd fallen in love with, to come and take her home, but, like millions of her sisters before and after, she made her way back to her abode, bleeding and in pain, alone. She must have loved that man as she came later to love the God of Christianity, because she chased off to Chicago after him and shared him with a certain Mae, who was probably both a drug addict and a prostitute. Whatever the details, both of them were arrested on a morals charge when Chicago police raided the offices of the Industrial Workers of the World, where the women had taken shelter.

This was not Dorothy Day's first prison stay. She was arrested in 1917 for picketing for Votes for Women in front of the White House and dragged off to jail where, she related, "a guard tried to grab me. I fought back-I wasn't being nonviolent-I fought back." During that jail stay, she also succeeded in literally taking a bite out of the warden.

She lived and died an eclectic, nondogmatic left-winger. In pre-World War I days, she made a meager living from New York's socialist daily, The Call , and then moved on to work for The Masses until it was shut down by the Government as punishment for the magazine's opposition to the war. Through her early years, Dorothy also slung hash, did clerical work and for a short time was a contract Hollywood screenwriter.

Although she disliked being connected with flapper-era Greenwich Village in people's minds, she was a well-known figure in places like the Hell Hole and Romany Marie's. It has been said by some that she was the inspiration for the character of Josie Hogan in Eugene O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten . However that may be, there were nights when she lay next to him in bed, comforting him as he shivered with the D.T.'s.

She was a modern woman, even to being a single, unwed mother. Although earlier she had been married to a small-time confidence man, the father of her daughter wasn't a louse so much as a recognizable type, a guy who drew back from commitment. After the birth of her daughter, Tamar, whose name means "little palm tree" in Hebrew, he didn't leave the picture entirely, but he was there without really being there.

How could a woman with a biography like that be considered for sainthood? But who better to think about on this island where 100,000 other women with tangled histories go home from the office every night to order takeout and ask: "Why am I here? Is shopping all there is to it?"

After Dorothy, whose parents were of nonchurchgoing WASP background, became a Roman Catholic, she brought her new faith and her old socialist beliefs together to found the Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933. In a few years, the paper had a circulation of nearly 200,000, although it lost readers when Dorothy, always the pacifist, would not support the Second World War. Shortly after founding the newspaper, she started opening Houses of Hospitality, which gave shelter, food, clothes and succor to all who came. They've had their ups and downs, but at last count, there were no fewer than 141 of them around the world.

Being unpopular meant nothing to her. She courted unpopularity in the 1930's when she opposed fascism, racism and anti-Semitism; she got a dose of the same in the 1950's when she resisted McCarthyism and the Cold War, prompting J. Edgar Hoover to say, "She is consciously or unconsciously being used by communist groups."

If she were here now, there'd be no fashionable buzz. She wouldn't be Tina meat, not this one who disliked abortions, disliked homosexuality and put family life before all. Perhaps with her personal history, she thought she knew. With people like Dorothy, you can always pick and choose. You can remember her as a feminist, as a woman who led the opposition to our foreign policy for decades, and you can forget she also said, "When man takes to himself the right to use sex as pleasure alone, cutting it away from its creative aspect by artificial birth control, by perverse practices, he is denying 'the absolute Supremacy of the Creative Deity.'" Well, she tried it both ways and decided that human life is more than a pig roast, that the problems of human existence transcend stumbling out of Barneys loaded down with packages, trying to figure out how to get a cab.

I met her once. She was an old lady then, with her hair braided and pinned in the back so that she looked like the grandmother she was, but she had the fast, fierce eye of an eagle. It gleamed and it was quick. If they make a saint out of her, they won't be putting Dorothy Day on any dashboards.

Dorothea, ora pro nobis .