After decades of rubbing elbows with Washington and Catholic powerbrokers, working to further the Catholic Church’s social principles, John Carr has collected some stories.
On Wednesday (Jan. 21), Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, took a moment at a celebration of Carr’s retirement after 50 years of work for the church to reassure Carr that the difficult moments showed not that he was “a glutton for punishment,” the cardinal said. “I think you’re a man of faith.”
“To see up close and personally the church’s defects and to keep at it, that’s fabulous,” Tobin told Carr at Georgetown University, where Carr was until last month co-director of the school’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, which he founded in 2013.
Carr’s association with the U.S. Catholic bishops was not only long, it was effective. While he led their peace and justice advocacy, the bishops successfully advocated for the Family and Medical Leave Act, for the child tax credit to become partially refundable, for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and various other development assistance and social safety-net policies.
“Over a lifetime, John Carr has given flesh and blood to the Sermon on the Mount,” Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich told RNS, “not only by literally rolling up his sleeves to meet the needs of the marginalized standing before him, but also through his uniquely gifted and articulated advocacy, which has served as a rallying cry for others to join him.”
To continue reading this article, click here.
With thanks to America, Religious News Service (RNS) and Aleja Hertzler-McCain, where this article originally appeared.
