The Three Crosses of Denis Hurley

by Admin · November 9, 2015

The legacies of Archbishop Denis Hurley are many, but they can be summed up in the image on the cover of his biography, argues Redemptorist FATHER LARRY KAUFMANN.

In 1987 I served as a co-lecturer during the theological winter school with Elizabeth Johnson, a world-renowned theologian and author of many books, the most recent of which is Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love.

At the Durban session, after Beth’s lecture on a feminist perspective on Christology, Archbishop Denis Hurley got up immediately, came to the podium, and, striking his breast, declared: We men must beat our breasts for the way we have treated women in the Church and in society. And he promptly went over and embraced Beth.

Archbishop Hurley and Beth became fast friends; they kept up a correspondence and met a few times in the US. When Archbishop Hurley died, Beth Johnson commented: It was just good to know he was around.

Contemplating Denis Hurley’s legacy, I am inspired by the photograph on the cover of Paddy Kearney’s biography of the archbishop, Guardian of the Light. The photo captures Archbishop Hurley now mature in years deep in prayer.

But notice three images of the cross in the photo: a cross embossed on the stole; the pectoral cross; the huge wooden cross he is carrying.

The Cross on the Stole

In his biography, Kearney refers to Archbishop Hurley’s painful experience during his final term of working with the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), of which he had chaired for 16 years. The cross embossed on the liturgical stole symbolises for me the painful experience of which Kearney writes.

The work of ICEL, which was nearly completed in 1998, was suppressed. This was not simply for liturgical and theological reasons. An ideological struggle had been taking place in the Church for a while.

The curia wanted to recentralise power after Vatican II had called for greater collegiality among the bishops in the exercise of apostolic authority.

Archbishop Hurleys greatest joy at Vatican II was to see collegiality accepted for the Scriptural truth it represents. The cross he bore was to see this eroded, if not systematically dismantled.

Vatican II had given bishops conferences the responsibility for translating texts. ICEL was jointly formed by the English-speaking bishops conferences to carry out this mandate. However, when the Congregation for Divine Worship was established, members of the curia set about taking back the authority over translations given to the bishops and centralising it once more. The result is the present English language tower of Babel.

Jesuit Father Gerald O Collins, in an open letter to English-speaking bishops (The Tablet, March 7, 2015), suggests that the sacral style we now use would be alien to Jesus himself, who taught us to pray simply and intimately. Archbishop Hurley would agree.

Fr OCollins muses that phrases in the Lord’s prayer would probably have been rendered as graciously grant, we pray, that you would give us our daily bread, or may thy will, we pray, O Lord, be done through your prevenient grace.

The stripping away of the original work of ICEL was for Archbishop Hurley a cross that he bore graciously and with immense charity. I confess that the new translation of the Mass continues to be a burden for me as a celebrant, particularly the convoluted prefaces. But I am equally conscious that I have a long way to go in emulating Archbishop Hurley’s humility and even humour in bearing with the follies of our very human Church.

A final point on Archbishop Hurley and the liturgy, but this time a different issue. During Vatican II, Archbishop Hurley made an intervention, inspired as he was by Fr Teilhard de Chardin, hoping to see a Solemnity of Creation included in the new Roman calendar.

His proposal was rejected. But it was prophetic, and I wonder, after Pope Francis encyclical Laudato Si, whether the time for Archbishop Hurleys hope has not arrived?

The Pectoral Cross

What must it have been for Denis Hurley to wear this ceremonial episcopal cross from the age of 31 years? The vocation of a bishop brings its own participation in the cross of Christ.

However, the legacy of Archbishop Hurley which I want to highlight in this regard is the cross he carried in relation to Vatican IIs teaching on the college of bishops.

It has been suggested that the denial of the cardinals red hat to Hurley was linked to his reservations about Humanae Vitae and to his views on a celibate clergy, among other things.

However, as Kearney carefully points out in his book, the problem was not simply these questions. It was, rather, the fact that Archbishop Hurley believed that papal refusal to have them even debated among bishops was a denial of the principle of collegiality.

In 1985, at a gathering of the Catholic Theological Society of South Africa in Durban, Archbishop Hurley delivered a paper critical of the new Code of Canon Law for the simple reason, he argued, that it had failed the principle of collegiality of Vatican II.

Archbishop Hurley carried the cross of a Vatican II bishop frustrated by the diminishment of the principle of collegiality.

But perhaps his sufferings have become redemptive. How Archbishop Hurley would have risen to the occasion in the debates taking place at last months synod of bishops on marriage and the family! How he would have sung an Alleluia to Pope Francis for promoting open and honest dialogue!

Cross on the Shoulder

Denis Hurley carried, with people, their suffering under apartheid. The image here is of Archbishop Hurley as a Simon of Cyrene, helping Christ to carry his cross.

Countless people today can testify to the strength and encouragement that Hurley gave them during the apartheid years, made all the more authentic by their knowledge that he himself was often persecuted and hounded by the regime.

This is what I experienced personally when Hurley drove up to meet me at Cedara and take me with him in his car to my parish at Mpophomeni near Howick, so that I would not have to be alone to face hippos and casspirs full of security police while conducting the funeral of four slain parishioners.

Putting on his mitre in the sacristy before the funeral Archbishop Hurley said to me: I think we should give these people the dignity of the mitre, dont you?

The cross of Jesus manifested itself in the life of Denis Hurley in many ways. I have alluded to only three instances where it was painfully real for him. But as Christians we celebrate the triumph of the Cross. We confess our faith in the glory of the Risen Christ.

Cross and Resurrection. This is the heart of the kerygma, the mystery of faith we proclaim in the liturgy immediately after the consecration. It is the Paschal mystery of Christ into which we are all baptised.

That he lived this mystery so profoundly is, for me, Denis Hurleys greatest legacy.