John R. Quinn, Archbishop and Liberal Voice in Church, Dies at 88 … – New York Times

Archbishop Quinn used his platform to criticize American military intervention in Central America and to condemn nuclear war as inherently immoral; at one point, he called on Roman Catholics serving in the armed forces to defy any order to detonate a nuclear weapon.

He argued for greater openness in debating such doctrinal questions as contraception, the ordination of women and whether to allow divorced Catholics to receive the sacraments. In 1985, he appointed Sister Mary Bridget Flaherty as his chancellor, or manager of day-to-day operations. It was the highest position ever attained by a woman in a major diocese.

In moving to address the AIDS crisis, Archbishop Quinn donated a former convent to be used as a hospice and, through the social-services organization Catholic Charities, created a housing program to help AIDS patients remain in their apartments.

Archbishop Quinn held firm to church doctrine on abortion, opposing Roe v. Wade and campaigning for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Our witness to the sanctity of human life cannot diminish and our effort cannot cease, he wrote in the Jesuit magazine America in 2009, referring to the grave moral evil inherent in abortion.

John Raphael Quinn was born on March 28, 1929, in Riverside, Calif., to Ralph Quinn and the former Elizabeth Carroll. He set his sights on the priesthood while serving as an altar boy there in St. Francis de Sales parish.

He enrolled in the Immaculate Heart Seminary in El Cajon, Calif., and completed his training at the Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained as a priest for the diocese of San Diego in 1953, his third year of study, and received his licentiate in sacred theology the following year before taking up duties as an associate pastor in St. Georges Parish in Ontario, Calif.

After serving as vice rector and rector of the Immaculate Heart Seminary in San Diego, with two years as president of St. Francis College Seminary in El Cajon in between, he became auxiliary bishop of San Diego.

While attending a synod in Rome in 1980, Archbishop Quinn ruffled feathers by informing the assembled bishops that the church would have to address resistance to its doctrines forbidding contraception. He cited studies showing that 76 percent of Catholic women in the United States used contraceptive devices and that 71 percent of American priests did not regard the practice as a serious sin.

To quell the ensuing furor, he issued a statement explaining that he supported church doctrine. The intent of my speech was to suggest possible ways of making the churchs teaching on contraception better understood and more widely accepted, he said.

Some Vatican watchers, reading between the lines, saw his remarks as a move to push the church in a more liberal direction. That did not happen, and his outspokenness on the subject, and on the church hierarchy later on, might explain his failure to be named a cardinal.

All he did was ask that the church acknowledge the views of the laity on birth control, but that was the turning point, Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame, told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1995. He wasnt challenging church teachings. He was just acknowledging reality.

His last two years as archbishop were clouded by financial problems and allegations of sexual abuse and embezzlement leveled against two priests in the archdiocese. In response to damage wrought by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and expensive new building requirements, Archbishop Quinn closed more than a dozen churches, cut the staff of the archdiocese by 20 percent and sold the old archbishops residence.

After retiring at the end of 1995, he delivered a widely publicized address at Campion Hall, Oxford, in response to Pope John Paul IIs 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That they may be one), which invited suggestions on papal overhaul and ways to promote dialogue with other Christian denominations.

In his address, the archbishop argued for a spirit of criticism and open discussion. He targeted the papal curia, or governing body, which he described as a politburo that stifled free discussion and imposed its will, making bishops managers who only work under instructions rather than true witnesses of faith who teach in communion with the pope in the name of Christ.

He elaborated on his ideas in a book, The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity, published in 1999. He was also the author of Ever Ancient, Ever New: Structures of Communion in the Church (2013).

Original post:

John R. Quinn, Archbishop and Liberal Voice in Church, Dies at 88 ... - New York Times