April 21, 2003
Amid televised CNN flashes of looting in Baghdad, and the darkness of such tumultuous times, the words of Lord Conrad Black give me inspiration.
Lord Black’s words, delivered at the funeral of his "dear, wise constant friend" Emmett Cardinal Carter, lit candles in despairing souls.
It was 20 years ago that a young Conrad Black explored a budding intrigue with Catholicism with the late Cardinal. Sipping the Cardinal’s "very good claret," Black and the man of the cloth engaged in a great variety of topics.
Writing about the passing of his friend in the National Post, Lord Black, very much a man of the world, talked about his belief that "miracles sometimes occurred and that, therefore, logically, any miracle could occur, even scientifically improbable ones like the virgin birth and the physical ascension of Christ."
Cardinal Carter told Black that "if the Resurrection did not occur, all Christianity is a fraud and a trumpery."
"Already in his 70s, he had bet his life on that proposition. He acknowledged it cheerfully, unshakeable in his faith, but making no effort to exterminate doubt," Lord Black wrote.
There was a long lineup of political bigwigs at St. Michael’s Cathedral for Cardinal Carter’s April 10th funeral. Just days before, CBC Television ignobly hinted that the Cardinal had always hob-nobbed with the wealthy. The network even resurrected the Cardinal’s alleged reference to the poor as "ragpickers."
But at the funeral, the perfume of incense overpowered the stench of old insults. If the television network could not mar the Cardinal’s dignity in life, how could they do so after his death?
"Whether in the most informal discussion or on great public occasions, (the Cardinal) always knew when to be flexible, when humorous, when unyielding. Even in the winter of his days, labouring under the effects of his stroke in 1980, he was never inept or inarticulate," Lord Black recalled.
Lord Black described the Cardinal’s media detractors as "the agnostic or anti-clerical elements of the Toronto press."
The Cardinal’s working life, he said, "was given over almost entirely to the disadvantaged, and he vastly increased the scale of charitable and pastoral work in his archdiocese."
If there was anyone who knew Cardinal Carter, it was Lord Black, who after all shared a friendship with the cleric for a quarter of a century. "His judgment and personality were always sober but never solemn; and never, not at his most beleaguered and not on the verge of death, did he show a trace of despair. He was intellectual but practical, spiritual but not sanctimonious or utopian, proud but never arrogant. He must have had faults, but I never detected any. He was a great man, yet the salt of the earth."
Cardinal Carter’s favourite single literary sentence, described by Lord Black as the one at the end of the introduction of Cardinal Newman’s Second Spring, is a source of inspiration for dark days.
"We mourn for the blossoms of May because they are to wither, but we know withal that May shall have its revenge upon November, in the revolution of that solemn circle that never stops and that teaches us, in our height of hope ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair."
It was the words of a close friend that carried Lord Black through the funeral of his admired and beloved Cardinal: "On the day Emmett Carter died, another close friend, who sometimes acted as legal counsel to the Cardinal, sent me a message ending: ‘May his spirit soar and may you meet again.’ Those prayerful hopes were much in my thoughts at his funeral on Thursday."
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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