Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan was a student all his life, a great friend of the young, and a great teacher, Father Daniel J. O’Connor said in a homily at the archdiocesan students Mass.

In the homily last Friday, Father O’Connor said, “The archbishop was a student all his life; that is why he always remained so young in his thinking and his outlook. He was a teacher, because every bishop is a teacher. His duty is to pass on the faith he had from the apostles.” Father O’Connor, secretary for Catholic Education traced the archbishop’s education from his parochial school days to his graduation from the University of Notre Dame, ‘a school that he loved.’

“The archbishop kept in close contact with the University throughout his life, and was very interested in it programs, especially those in the fields of theology and religious education,” Father O’Connor said.

Following his graduation from the University, the archbishop studied at St. Mary’s Seminary, Cleveland, Ohio. Father O’Connor noted that “Like others who attended a university before seminary training, he noticed how unfavorably the scholarship at the seminary compared with that of a great university.”

The comparison, the priest said, “was of great concern to the archbishop because although every priest cannot be a scholar, he must be acquainted with scholarship. He must recognize its demands, especially the freedom of inquiry that true scholarship requires. He certainly must not fear this freedom.”

“As a result of this concern of the archbishop, the young seminarians of the archdiocese were very close to him, and he took great care to place them in seminaries where true scholarship was practiced. Moreover, he gave a great deal of attention to the requests of individual seminarians as to their preference of seminaries, and tried to accommodate their wishes if this was possible.” The archbishop received his Master’s Degree from Carroll University, Cleveland, while he was assigned there as Newman chaplain. He used his G.I. bill to finance his graduate school education, the priest said.

Commenting on the archbishop’s Newman career, Father O’Connor said, “He did much to begin the change of direction in the Newman work that is still continuing. He realized how important this work would become. Almost all you boys and girls here this morning will attend college, and the great percentage of you will attend public colleges.”

“If the Church is to reach and help you during these years, then it must do so through Newman chaplains. Their work must be directed towards your needs. Archbishop Hallinan knew this and tried to adapt the Newman programs so that it would be more responsive to the needs of the young people it served,” the priest said.

Noting the archbishop’s great interest in archdiocesan schools, Father O’Connor said, that his first public appearance after he became ill was at the archdiocesan graduation in 1965.

After the archbishop’s return from the second season of the Council, he assembled all juniors and seniors in archdiocesan high schools to explain to them personally the meaning of the first reforms voted by the Council.

Father O’Connor said, “The archbishop knew that it was on the young people of the archdiocese that the ultimate success of the council’s reform depended, because they were the ones who would make council reforms live or let them die.”

“When he began to implement the reforms in the archdiocese, he ordered a lay congress to precede the Synod. This was to give the laity a voice in the direction toward which the archdiocese would turn. But the archbishop also called a Young Adults Congress, in order to get the point of view of the younger people of the archdiocese. He asked that through high school religion classes these young people might also make their voice heard, and write to him the consensus of their ideas.” Father O’Connor noted that Archbishop Hallinan understood that the needs of young people differed from those of others. He said, “Those of us who teach in schools of the archdiocese know how quickly he would give permission for such innovations as jazz and folk Masses, Mass in the classrooms, or in the homes after proms, innovations in retreats and days of recollection for high school students.” This is what distinguished him from so many bishops of his time. He was not afraid of the young. He loved their idealism, and knew that they were sometimes more responsible, not less, than their elders, because they feared less. He saw in young people not just the future, but the present, too, and this was his concern: ‘What is going to happen now!’”

The priest said, the archbishop summed up this idea in a forward to the 1967 annual report of the department of Catholic education with the words: “Not only the future of Catholicism rests in these schools. The present itself may flourish and wither right here in our times.”

Quoting the poet John Donne, who said, “any man’s death diminishes me,” Father O’Connor concluded, “In the years ahead, I believe we shall realize more how our lives have been diminished by the death of Archbishop Hallinan, a great teacher and a great student, he was a friend of every teacher and student. Especially, he was a friend of the young. May God reward him with eternal life.”