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100 兩 L O YA L D I S S E N T precisely because it deals with human life and actions. I never heard from Bernardin about that meeting or what happened after it. A little earlier I had had a call from Raymond Powers, who worked for the apostolic delegate, Jean Jadot. The apostolic delegate is the papal representative to the church in the United States, serves as a liaison between the Vatican and individual bishops, and is instrumental in the appointment of new bishops. Some have even called him, unkindly, the official Vatican spy. Ray, whom I knew, asked if I would be willing to meet with the archbishop. I agreed but added that if he planned to bring advisors , then I would have the same number with me. I also asked about the purpose, format, and agenda of the meeting. About an hour later the archbishop called and apologized for not calling himself in the first place. He explained that he wanted to meet with me three or four times a year in an informal way and off the record in order to hear what I was thinking and writing. He emphasized that he would not agree with everything I said but that he thought it was important for him to know what I was saying and why. If the CDF had been in correspondence with Bernardin, I was sure they must also have been in contact with Jadot about me. But I accepted his invitation gladly, and we continued to meet on a regular basis until he was ‘‘promoted to Rome’’ in 1980. We would meet upstairs in the delegation in his personal study, where I would often find him smoking a Belgian cigar. From the very beginning he reiterated his intentions for these meetings and urged that we be perfectly frank with one another. I was never invited to any formal or public dinners or receptions at the delegation, as were other theologians in the Washington area, but we met regularly in this informal and open manner. Over time we got to know each other fairly well, and our conversations were as open, honest, and frank as any I have ever had. I think it was at our second meeting that he told me he had finally met my former bishop, Fulton Sheen. Jadot’s comment about Sheen was that he was a marvelous combination of the gospel and Hollywood! On one early occasion, he asked my opinion about five new bishops who had been appointed to the CUA board of trustees. I replied that one was excellent, three were not very good, and one was so-so. When he agreed with my Growing Tensions and Maturing Theology: The Seventies 兩 101 evaluation of the one as excellent, I told him I did not think that he should tell me his opinion of American bishops. He responded that I was always open and frank with him, and he would always be that way with me. When I told him the name of the bishop I thought was ‘‘so-so,’’ he replied that I was too generous in my estimation of that man. All agreed that Jadot had a great influence on the Catholic Church in the United States, moving it in a pastoral and progressive dimension. The rigid traditionalists, of course, blamed him for this. Early in John Paul II’s pontificate, Jadot was appointed the pro-president of the Secretariat for Non-Christians in Rome. This position put one in line for receiving the red hat of the cardinalate, but Jadot was never made a cardinal; his approach and vision were not that of John Paul II. He retired to Belgium in 1984. A curious incident occurred at a one-week summer course I taught at the University of San Diego in the early 1980s. The class met five mornings for three hours, and midway through the first session I suggested that we introduce ourselves, but one man declined to do so. When I mentioned this to the director of the summer session, he arranged to come to the second meeting to ascertain whether everyone there had in fact registered for the course. The gentleman in question said that his registration had been paid by a Father Sullivan in Los Angeles, but he still would not identify himself. After the third session, a young woman, the only undergraduate in the class, as I recall, approached me to ask what a papal nuncio...

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