OFTEN feeling under siege, American liberals are rarely generous with their opponents. Moral majority types and anti-abortionists are usually subject to the most biting knee-jerk mockery and are not often dignified with rational analysis and debate. Many of their more wooden opponents do not deserve much scrutiny, it could be argued.
In death, no such fate has so far met the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O'Connor, who died this week after a long battle with brain cancer.
O'Connor was a deeply conservative Catholic in the intellectual mould of Pope John Paul II, yet this week he has been honoured with respect from all shades of the political arena - a reflection perhaps of both the complexities of the man and the diverse, cosmopolitan city he represented.
'He is a good and holy shepherd,' said liberal New York Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. 'He made important changes and we pray for him.' Former New York mayor Ed Koch spoke for many Jews when he called him 'His Eminence and His Honour'. 'As a serious Jew, I always felt comfortable at St Patrick's Cathedral. A truly phenomenal man of the church, a man of all the people no matter what colour or religion. A truly phenomenal man.' The New York Times, often seen as a highly influential bastion of local liberal thought, highlighted his conservatism and his compassion in a kindly editorial send-off.
'He passionately opposed abortion, birth control, homosexuality, the ordination of women and even baseball on Good Friday,' it wrote. 'Such views stirred controversy among many New Yorkers and even some of his own parishioners, but he balanced them with a plea for those in need, even when the needy were at odds with his strong Catholic message.' The strength of that message was, after all, a key part of the Cardinal's make-up. It played an important part in his rise from a largely unknown Pennsylvania parish to the most important voice in American Catholicism in his 16 combative years as Archbishop. The New York position is considered extremely important to the Vatican. It is responsible not just for the direction of one of its most liberal and progressive flocks, but also for a key source of funds for troubled Vatican coffers. O'Connor established a special foundation for the Pope's work that two years ago was worth an estimated US$44 million (about HK$342 million).
Pioneering the post-Mass press conference and the weekly television show as a bully pulpit to help pull back wavering American Catholics to more traditional doctrines, he knew - for the most part - how to work New York's highly complex racial and political currents.
Once, as gays protested during a public Mass, he vowed to continue 'over my dead body'. Despite positions on homosexuality which outraged the city's many gay and lesbian movements, he publicly bathed Aids patients and demanded Catholic health workers do more to help when they struggled for medical attention in the mid-1980s.
