U.S. House chaplain tries to emulate late Chicago cardinal

Published: 2003-11-19

CHICAGO (CNS) -- When Father Daniel P. Coughlin ministers to members of the U.S. House of Representatives, he often finds himself calling on the lessons he learned from the late Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago -- a mentor, a colleague and a friend. Father Coughlin, a Chicago priest who in 2000 became the first Catholic chaplain of the House, said the country and its leaders need the kind of pastoral care that Cardinal Bernardin exemplified. The priest delivered the sixth annual Bernardin Memorial Lecture Nov. 12 at Catholic Theological Union. The cardinal died Nov. 14, 1996. Cardinal Bernardin was an "adroit bureaucrat," a skilled listener, an incisive questioner, a born facilitator, Father Coughlin told about 50 people who gathered for a short memorial service before his talk. Those skills served Cardinal Bernardin well in practicing post-Second Vatican Council Catholicism, which looked to engage the modern world and to shape it, to move outward to offer its riches to the world around it, rather than hunkering down and staying on the defensive, Father Coughlin said. It is also the only kind of Catholicism that will work in a public position such as Father Coughlin's ministry on Capitol Hill.

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