Bernard Law: Ordination And Early Assignments

According to Wikipedia, "On May 21, 1961, Law was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson in Mississippi. He served two years as an assistant pastor of St. Paul's Catholic Church in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was the editor of The Mississippi Register, the diocesan newspaper." The photo at left shows him in effect vamping for the camera at some point during this period, giving his best imitation of J Edgar Hoover. There's nothing pastoral in his visage as he glowers out, hunched over, apparently in the process of reviewing some sort of thick dossier. The photo is thoroughly posed, of course, because it looks like Law is already a media figure.

Wikipedia makes the point that "Law was a civil rights activist." But as I reflect on the civil rights era, which I lived through, it seems to me that the heavy lifting, Brown v Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the National Guard called up by Eisenhower in Little Rock, had been done in the mid 1950s. By the early 1960s, a national consensus had in fact been fully established. Reflecting on this, I looked up the Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live With", which first appeared in a centerfold in Look magazine in 1964.

It depicts a specific episode that occurred in New Orleans in 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, but there was certainly nothing new about it; the circumstances had been established in 1954 by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, and Eisenhower had made it plain that the federal government would use the military and law enforcement to enforce that decision in 1957. By 1964, national media was already aware that it could make money by virtue-signaling in the wake of the last murderous efforts by the Klan to hold back the tide. To run the Rockwell painting in a centerfold was a fully vetted business decision by Look; the Klan didn't read magazines, after all.

By the 1960s, the civil rights movement had become a long-running media event, which included, then as now, sporadic episodes of murderous violence that are arguably stoked by media focus -- and the episodes themselves then generate more frenzy that, by the way, results in profitable headlines, clicks, and commercials. And clergy hopped on board this bandwagon, because it brought media attention, advanced careers, and oh-by-the-way, sold books. A parallel career is that of Episcopalian priest Malcolm Boyd:

Boyd went on to become a minister in the American Civil Rights Movement, promoting integration and voting rights. He participated as one of the Freedom Riders in 1961. Later that year he became the Episcopal Chaplain at Wayne State University in Detroit. . . . Boyd was the author of over 30 books, including a bestselling collection of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? (1965). Are You Running With Me, Jesus was a great success, and gained Boyd a reasonable amount of public attention and fame, which continued throughout his life.

Another parallel career was that of TEC Bishop Paul Moore, Jr:

In 1957, he was named Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, Indiana. Moore introduced the conservative Midwestern capital to social activism through his work in the inner city. Moore served in Indianapolis until he was elected Suffragan Bishop of Washington, D.C., in 1964.

During his time in Washington he became nationally known as an advocate of civil rights and an opponent of the Vietnam War. He knew Martin Luther King, Jr., and marched with him in Selma and elsewhere. In 1970, he was elected as coadjutor and successor to Bishop Horace Donegan in New York City. He was installed as Bishop of the Diocese of New York in 1972 and held that position until 1989.

I remember one of my better professors at the elite school where I did my undergraduate work. In the middle of a lecture, he went into a digression: "You guys can dress up as Indians and build bonfires and go to parties and get drunk. But you're always going to be Ivy Leaguers. Like it or not, you're part of the genteel tradition. You're never going to be able to get rid of that." Bernard Law went to Harvard and lived at Adams House. Paul Moore went to St Paul's and Yale, and both he and his wife came from old money. The civil rights work could never be more than a pose.

The start of Law's clerical career occurred in a clear context. Beyond that, Law in Mississippi gained a reputation as a liberal through the civil rights work. My informant tells me that Law had a continuing fan base there, but it grew disillusioned after Law became Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, when he began to adopt a more conservative image. My informant tells me that when people from Mississippi would bring this up with him during his time in Missouri, he'd turn to my informant and slyly wink.