For Cardinal Egan, a Focus on Taking Care of Basics
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/nyregion/24egan.html?_r=2&em=&pagewanted=all>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/nyregion/24egan.html?_r=2&em=&pagewanted=all [] Todd Heisler/The New York Times Cardinal Edward M. Egan in 2007, the year he wrote to Pope Benedict XVI offering to retire. By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/paul_vitello/index.html?inline=nyt-per>PAUL VITELLO Published: February 23, 2009 He closed a budget gap, streamlined the payroll, staved off wholesale layoffs, avoided scandal, kept a low profile and occasionally played a <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/wolfgang_amadeus_mozart/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Mozart piano sonata for guests at his home. Most chief executives with a record like that would make stockholders swoon. Skip to next paragraph Related <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/nyregion/24bishop.html?ref=nyregion>New Archbishop Pledges to Look Out for His Priests and Increase Their Ranks (February 24, 2009) <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/nyregion/24dolan.html?ref=nyregion>Man in the News | Timothy Michael Dolan: A Genial Conservative for New York’s Archdiocese (February 24, 2009) Times Topics: <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/edward_m_egan/index.html>Edward M. Egan Yet Cardinal <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/edward_m_egan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Edward M. Egan, who will retire in April as head of the <http://www.ny-archdiocese.org/>Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, rarely evoked that kind of reaction during his nine years as steward of the church’s flagship diocese in the United States. He was respected by some, feared and reviled by some. But in a way that made him more fully a New Yorker than any of his recent predecessors, Cardinal Egan, 76, was also a bit of a faceless stranger in the city. Cultured, lawyerly and aloof a tall, courtly man dressed in workaday black with the stiff gait of a polio survivor this archbishop and shepherd of 2.5 million Catholics could walk down the street without attracting any attention at all. By contrast with Cardinal John J. O’Connor, his ubiquitous and media-savvy predecessor, Cardinal Egan largely shunned politics and reporters, viewed the media with tight-lipped sufferance and preferred to slip now and again under the cover of his relative anonymity into an orchestra seat on the aisle at the Met. As all bishops must when they turn 75, Cardinal Egan wrote to <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Pope Benedict XVI, in April 2007, offering to retire. On Monday, the pope named his successor, Archbishop <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/timothy_m_dolan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Timothy M. Dolan of Milwaukee, who will be formally installed on April 15; until then, the cardinal will serve as apostolic administrator of the archdiocese. Cardinal Egan’s admirers praise him as a tough manager who made hard decisions in the aftermath of Cardinal O’Connor’s 16-year tenure, when the demographic landscape shifted beneath the church’s brick-and-mortar infrastructure yet few changes were made. Cardinal Egan closed schools and churches with dwindling attendance, and sold some prime properties for hefty profits, helping to avoid the more severe shutdowns that have racked the Archdioceses of Chicago and Boston and the neighboring Diocese of Brooklyn. But his critics saw him as an angry and imperious boss, more fluent in Latin and canon law than in human interaction. He faced periodic rebellions by some of his 500 priests, who complained of peremptory transfers and lack of dialogue. He crushed the uprisings, demanding public apologies. In his first major housecleaning after taking over in 2000, he assembled the teaching staff at the archdiocese’s seminary in Yonkers and, after formalities, read a list of names. Those not mentioned, he said, would not be employed in the next school year. And even many admirers lament that during a historic period for the Catholic Church in America, when a sex abuse scandal and dwindling resources caused an unprecedented retrenchment, the pulpit in the media capital of the world was occupied by a priest known more for his administrative skills than his visceral grasp of the times in which he lived. He made fervent statements in support of school vouchers and against abortion, but adopted a narrower focus than Cardinal O’Connor, who visited foreign countries and spoke on a wide range of public issues. In an interview with The New York Times in December, granted in anticipation of his retirement, Cardinal Egan replied with the painstaking sensibility of the canon lawyer that he is, when asked why he had avoided a broader role. “If I were to be more involved in making statements of that kind, I would have had to do that very accurately and investigate everything I planned to say to make sure it was correct and proper,” he said. “I felt it was better to spend that time on what matters most the parishes and schools of this diocese, the basic institutions.” By his own account, and others’, that is pretty much what he did: tackle the basics. He closed 23 schools, shuttered 10 parishes, merged 11 others and closed 3 mission churches; he also shed scores of employees from diocesan departments. But over all, many parish leaders said, he spared more than he culled by raising a lot of money. He revived a rule that parishes must turn over 7 percent to 7.5 percent of collections to the church, a policy that Cardinal O’Connor had suspended. Cardinal Egan hired a fund-raising firm to turbocharge <http://cardinalsappeal.org/video.htm>the annual Cardinal’s Appeal, which raised more than $17 million in each of the past several years. During his tenure, the archdiocese sold nine major properties or air rights, for a total of about $107 million. And though he has released few details about archdiocesan s finances, he says he retired the $48 million deficit he found when he arrived in 2000. “He doesn’t get much credit for it, but I think his efforts to raise money made a big difference,” said Terry Golway, author of a biography of Cardinal O’Connor. “The assumption when he arrived was that given the huge deficit O’Connor had left, Egan was going to have to shut down a much greater number of schools and churches than he did.” Why Cardinal Egan did not get much credit or public affection is a question of interest to a wide spectrum of observers, including the cardinal himself. His answer, in part, is that it was his choice: He was never going to be a crowd-pleaser like Cardinal O’Connor, and never tried to be. In part, he said, it was the fault of his bête noire, the news media, which he chided sardonically in a speech during Mass on Monday morning with his successor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “I told him that the news media of New York just loves the archbishop of New York and always treats him wonderfully,” he said. “And he’s prepared for that.” Cardinal Egan blames the media for what he considers major distortions of his image: portraying him as a cool administrator rather than a passionate pastor who visited almost every one of the hundreds of churches and schools in the archdiocese, and casting him as a villain in the sex abuse scandal, which he believes American bishops handled as well as they could. By most measures, Cardinal Egan was a minor player in the scandal. As bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., in the 1990s, he was criticized, like many prelates, for moving abusive priests from parish to parish. His unique contribution to the controversy was a legal strategy he devised there, claiming unsuccessfully that the church had no legal liability for the abuse because priests were “independent contractors,” not employees. When the news of sexual abuse by priests exploded nationally in 2002, he was forced to revisit his actions in Bridgeport, radically revise reporting policies for accused priests in New York and apologize for his past mistakes albeit conditionally. “If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry,” he said. Some priests complained that after the crisis emerged, he swung from one extreme overprotecting his priests to the other. A petition in 2003, signed by 74 priests, accused the cardinal of leaving suspects hanging out to dry by suspending without trials, in violation of church due-process rules. Another group of priests posted an anonymous letter online in 2006, calling him arrogant and vindictive. In response, Cardinal Egan said his critics were merely doing the bidding of the sexual abusers among them a sweeping reaction that some priests said proved their complaints. “His flaw as a leader was that he didn’t consider the impact his actions had on people, especially his priests,” said R. Scott Appleby, a professor of religious history at the <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_notre_dame/index.html?inline=nyt-org>University of Notre Dame. Friends, and some critics, said that in social settings, the cardinal can be winning. He is known for a relaxed joviality among major donors at fund-raising events. If that side of him rarely shone through in public, it may have been at least in part because of the timing of his arrival. Ask many public figures about him, and among the first words they utter are about his predecessor. “Egan is a decent man; he did a good job putting the finances in order,” said <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/edward_i_koch/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Edward I. Koch, the former mayor. “But his problem was that he wasn’t Cardinal O’Connor. The impact Cardinal O’Connor had on your soul, on your psyche Egan was just a different sort of personality.” He will be the first archbishop in the 200-year history of the archdiocese to retire; all the others died while in office. Cardinal Egan said he planned to stay put in retirement. An apartment on 33rd Street between First and Second Avenues, in a residential building under construction on church property, is considered a “possible, if not probable” home for the retired cardinal, said Joseph Zwilling, a diocesan spokesman. At a news conference on Monday, the cardinal said he hoped to be called on for the occasional Mass or baptism. Christine Haughney contributed reporting. <*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/on+allposters+today.html>on AllPosters today <*}}}><<*}}}>< <http://astore.amazon.com/halthekin-20>Catholic on Amazon <*}}}>< + <*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}>< <*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}>< + "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war" - Bl. Mother Teresa + <*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/on+allposters+today.html>on AllPosters today <*}}}><<*}}}>< <http://astore.amazon.com/halthekin-20>Catholic on Amazon <*}}}>< + <*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}>< <*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}>< + "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war" - Bl. 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