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Sometimes controversial Cardinal Gagnon dies at 89 |
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Written by Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
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Tuesday, 28 August 2007 |
VATICAN CITY - Montreal’s Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, 89, a long-time Vatican official and an outspoken defender of traditional church teaching who frequently found himself in the midst of controversy, died Aug. 25 in Montreal.
Pope Benedict XVI called the cardinal a “faithful servant of the church” who generously served many years “with competence and devotion.” In telegrams sent to Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal and Sulpician Father Lawrence Terrien, superior general of the Sulpicians, the Pope offered his condolences for the Sulpician cardinal’s death.
Cardinal Gagnon served as head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, 1983-1990, and as president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses, 1991-98.
Cardinal Gagnon was born in Port-Daniel, Que., in 1918. He was ordained a Sulpician priest in 1940. During the 1950s and ’60s, he was rector of two major seminaries in Canada and Colombia. He was named bishop of St. Paul in Alberta in 1969 and resigned in 1972 when he became rector of the Pontifical Canadian College in Rome.
Pope John Paul named him a cardinal in 1985.
Throughout his career at the Vatican, Cardinal Gagnon was an outspoken critic of North American society and church trends. He said U.S. religious education was diluted and failed to teach the basics and criticized sex education in the church. Some pastoral programs to help divorced Catholics, he said, had degenerated into “dating services” for people not free to marry.
During a 1988 meeting of Vatican officials and U.S. bishops, he praised the U.S. church’s strong anti-abortion stand but complained that sterilizations were being performed in Catholic hospitals and that church bulletin boards were referring parishioners to Planned Parenthood.
He cautioned bishops to guard against contraceptive methods getting into church natural family planning programs. Allowing for occasional contraception, he said in a 1989 interview, would be like giving an OK to the husband who loves his wife but takes “occasional excursions” with another woman.
“It is contrary to the basic meaning of love,” he said.
The cardinal spoke against Catholic politicians who did not support the church’s teaching on abortion. However, he said, individual Catholics may support imperfect abortion laws if they are working “toward obtaining, even if it’s little by little, better legislation.”
Cardinal Gagnon created a whirlwind of controversy in 1989 when he made remarks about women religious working on diocesan marriage tribunals.
“Women religious can be very helpful in dealing with marriage cases, but we have to be careful that their tender hearts do not play tricks on them,” causing them to lose their objectivity, he said during a 1989 meeting with U.S. bishops visiting Rome. His remarks were widely criticized as being sexist and ignorant of the professionalism of women who work on tribunals.
Though he retired from the family council’s presidency for health reasons in 1990, in 1991 he became head of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses.
Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist “has been forgotten in many places,” and some Catholics treat Mass as “a fraternal meeting,” he said in 1993. There should be a “more mystical emphasis” during Mass with “more time for meditation and less time for chatter,” he said.
The cardinal was a key figure in the Vatican’s efforts to reconcile with members of the Society of St. Pius X, founded by the late traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In 1987 Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Gagnon to investigate the possibility of a reconciliation. But Vatican efforts to reintegrate the archbishop and his followers broke down in 1988, and the archbishop was excommunicated weeks later when he ordained bishops without papal approval.
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