Word: bernardine
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...what I like, and I like naked women," insisted Impresario Alain Bernardin, who was host at a 25th anniversary celebration for his Paris nightspot, the Crazy Horse Saloon. On hand was Choreographer George Balanchine, who came to France to watch his Ravel ballets at the Paris Opera. Said the appreciative Balanchine after surveying the legwork of Bernardin's 18 dancing show girls: "You ought to lend some of your ideas to the opera...
Serious Talk. Yet Bernardin can and does intervene when he deems it necessary. He recently banned from the diocesan high schools a text called Love, Sex and Marriage because he judged it to contain doctrinal error-an act hailed by the ultraconservative national weekly The Wanderer. On the other hand, Bernardin offended many supporters of financially strapped parochial schools when he endorsed a tax increase for the distressed public schools. But he effectively tempers criticism of such decisions by carefully hearing all parties to the controversies and, when he disagrees, calmly explaining his own position...
Some who otherwise support Bernardin wonder whether his cautious decision making and cultivation of approval may not be signs of overweening ambition. His defenders contend that if the archbishop is ambitious, his zeal is for the welfare of his church, not himself. An almost compulsive worker, Bernardin rises at 6 a.m. to put in a 17-hour day of diocesan business and prayer. But his work is not all done at a desk: he enjoys spending many hours in informal but often serious talk with his fellow clergy and lay people...
...Bernardin's diligence and powers of conciliation will be sorely tested during his three years in national office. As two pessimistic reports to the bishops' conference last week indicated, the church is embattled both from within and without. One of the two appraisals came from Jesuit Sociologist John L. Thomas, who warned the bishops that today's technological society in the U.S. is "bereft of any convincing sense of ultimate purpose or rooted moral belief." Moreover, in the mobile U.S. society, Catholics have lost much of their comforting old ethnic solidarity. The changes in the church that...
...counterattack such forces, Bernardin calls for a renewed emphasis on both faith and moral principle, but he places an equally heavy emphasis on the need for social justice. His fellow bishops apparently feel the same way. In one significant action last week, the bishops opposed "efforts to use food as a political and strategic weapon," and called on "the whole Catholic community" to fast at least two days a week in order to help the hungry. Much more controversially, the bishops voted in a closed and heated session to authorize their pro-life committee to question Nelson Rockefeller...