| Book Review
Gentle Eminence - A Life of Cardinal Flahiff
Reviewed by Jack Shea, Ottawa, ON
Here follows a suggested article for the Journal in keeping with the theme
of Leadership in the Church. This article is in the form of
a book review. The book being reviewed is:
Gentle Eminence - A Life of Cardinal Flahiff, by P. Wallace Platt: McGill-Queen’s
Press
It was during the second Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971 that George Cardinal
Flahiff, the late Archbishop of Winnipeg, attracted some notoriety for
his strong statement on the importance of women playing a more prominent
role in the life of the Church.
This modest volume authored by P. Wallace Platt, a priest of the Congregation
of Saint Basil, describes the rich life of one of Canada’s most loved senior
Churchmen. The book, entitled “Gentle Eminence - a Life of Cardinal Flahiff”
follows the subject from his simple orgins as the son of an innkeeper in
Paris, Ontario, to the lofty precincts of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel
where he deliberated within the College of Cardinals in not one, but two,
Sacred Consistories, in the selection of the last two Popes.
The author takes us through the various stages of George Flahiff’s life
from his early student days to the position as Professor of Mediaeval History
at the Institute of Mediaeval Studies of the University of Toronto.
Later as Superior General of the Basilian Fathers, he was in 1961, chosen
as the Archbishop of Winnipeg. He was well-known there as a wise
pastor, a courteous man of deep spirituality, who loved the multilingual
and multiethnic flavour of this region.
In 1969 he was named a Cardinal of the Catholic Church and in 1971 was
a member of a delegation of four Canadian Bishops who attended the second
Synod of Bishops in Rome which discussed the themes of social justice and
the priesthood.
It was during this Synod that the Canadian Bishops and priests, through
the voice of Bishop Alexander Carter of Sault Ste. Marie, called for a
new look at the issue of compulsory celibacy and called for the establishment
of a married priesthood. However, the author of this life of Cardinal
Flahiff makes no mention of his subject’s views on such a significant
development of the ministry.
The author describes at some length, however, the seven-minute speech of
Cardinal Flahiff that reverberated around the world and made the speaker
a hero to some and something of a heretic to others:
“He recalled that the speakers before him had suggested extension of these
ministeries, even of the priesthood itself, to other categories in the
Church such as married men. He went on to say that all the previous
speakers had spoken about these various ministries as applying only to
men; no one had mentioned the place of women in ministries. He suggested
that to neglect such a consideration was to exclude one-half of all believers,
and that the traditional arguments for male exclusivity for ministries
no longer held. .... From that moment on, ..he was willy-nilly the champion
for the cause of women in major ministries”
Finally, the author, in his chapter entitled “The Sunset and the Sorrow”
treats with great sensitivity the difficult last years of Cardinal Flahiff
before his death in 1989.
This is an excellent and well-written biography of a well-loved, kind and
sensitive Canadian who put women’s rights in the Church on the agenda.
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