Background
He was born on August 24, 1895 in South Boston, Massachussets, the son of Patrick Cushing, a blacksmith, and Mary Dahill, immigrants from Ireland.
(This booklet on Questions and Answers concerning Communis...)
This booklet on Questions and Answers concerning Communism has been published with the hope that it might serve to arouse many from a state of apathy and indifference towards an international conspiracy that is bent on the domination of the world. The questions are those most frequently asked in classrooms and lecture halls. The answers are taken mainly from Communist writings. Papal encyclicals, reports of Congressional Committees and other sources of information, facts and guidance are quoted to substantiate our evaluation of the true and subtle nature of the enemy that confronts us. Live the life that is spelled out in the Gospels and the Ten Commandments. That way of life, for individuals and nations, is the first and greatest answer to the Communist peril. Thereafter every good reform needed in our country will follow and the roots of Communism in our midst will be destroyed.
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He was born on August 24, 1895 in South Boston, Massachussets, the son of Patrick Cushing, a blacksmith, and Mary Dahill, immigrants from Ireland.
Cushing attended public schools and then transferred to the Jesuit-run Boston College High School, from which he graduated in 1913. He spent two years at Boston College before entering St. John's Seminary, in Brighton, Massachussets, and was ordained a priest in 1921.
Cushing's main role was as fundraiser and builder of new churches, schools, and institutions.
On May 26, 1921, Cushing was ordained a priest by Cardinal William Henry O'Connell at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. His first assignment was as a curate at St. Patrick's Church in Roxbury, where he remained for two months. He was afterwards transferred to St. Benedict's Church in Somerville. In 1922, Cushing appeared unannounced at the residence of Cardinal O'Connell to request an assignment as a missionary. The young priest declared he wanted to "take heaven by storm. " O'Connell denied his request, and instead appointed him assistant director of the Boston office of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization dedicated to raising funds for missions. He later served as director of the Society from 1929 to 1944. He was raised to the rank of Monsignor on May 14, 1939.
He served as Archbishop of Boston from 1944 to 1970 and was made a cardinal in 1958.
He was on good terms with practically the entire Boston elite, as he softened the traditional confrontation between the Catholic Irish and the Protestant upper-class. Cushing built useful relationships with Jews, Protestants, and institutions outside the usual Catholic community. He helped presidential candidate John F. Kennedy deflect fears of papal interference in American government if a Catholic became president. Cushing's high energy level allowed him to meet with many people all day, often giving lengthy speeches at night. He was not efficient at business affairs, and when expenses built up he counted on his fund-raising skills instead of cost-cutting.
He died from cancer in Boston at the age of 75 on the feast of All Souls Day, and was buried in Hanover, Massachusetts at the Portiuncula Chapel on the grounds of Cardinal Cushing Centers.
In 1947, founded St. Coletta by the Sea with sponsorship from the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi. The organization, now Cardinal Cushing Centers continues to support developmentally disabled individuals ages 6 through the life continuum with campuses in Hanover, Massachusetts and Braintree, Massachusetts and community homes throughout the South Shore of Massachusetts. The now-closed Cardinal Cushing College, a women's college in Brookline, Massachusetts, was named after him. St. Coletta's School in Hanover, where he is buried, was subsequently renamed in his honor. In 1950, Richard Cardinal Cushing founded the Bon Secours Hospital, now Holy Family Hospital and Medical Center, in Methuen, Massachusetts. Through his guidance and leadership, the hospital has become one of the top Catholic hospitals in the state of Massachusetts Emmanuel College's Cardinal Cushing Library Building is named in his honor. The building houses the campus' library, a lecture hall, and various classrooms. Boston College has two buildings named in his honor: Cushing Hall, a freshman dormitory on the Newton Campus as well as another Cushing Hall, the home of the Connell School of Nursing. St. John's Seminary (Massachusetts) has their third theology classroom named after the Cardinal: The Richard Cardinal Cushing Classroom. The main student center of Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire is named the Cardinal. The Cushing houses, among many other significant groups and offices, the Meelia Center for Community Service, a service outreach organization in the greater Manchester area.
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"I'm all for Catholics being identified with Protestants and Jews in every possible friendly way, " he said. "Nobody is asking them to deny their faith, and they shouldn't be asking anybody to deny their faith. " He spoke in synagogues and Protestant churches and arranged for televising midnight mass at St. John's Seminary with a commentary that would help non-Catholics understand and appreciate the service. Episcopal Bishop Anson Phelps Stokes was to declare that the Protestant community had come to consider Cushing as "in a special way our own. "
On social issues Cushing was conservative. Although long a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he shared the opinion of his friend J. Edgar Hoover that Martin Luther King, Jr. , was a dangerous radical. He liked Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, though he was distressed when the society called John F. Kennedy a Communist. But he had a deep respect for American constitutional guaranties of religious liberty, and he understood non-Catholic sensibilities about the exercise of ecclesiastical power.
Throughout his life Cushing felt a special empathy for the helpless. He built six new hospitals. He frequently visited jails and got great satisfaction from visiting homes for the aged, sometimes joining in a song or a jig or exchanging his episcopal hat for one of the women's.
Quotations:
Cushing promptly issued a statement: "Whatever may be the custom elsewhere, the American tradition, of which Catholics form so loyal a part, is satisfied simply to call to public attention moral questions with their implications, and leave to the conscience of the people the specific political decision which comes in the act of voting. "
"I feel that as long as the majority of the American people" oppose giving federal money to parochial schools "Catholics should try to prove their rights to such assistance, but neither force such legislation through at the expense of national unity, nor use their political influence to block legislation because they do not get their own way. "
Cushing was a member of the NAACP.
He founded the Missionary Society of St. James the Apostle in 1958 to "serve the needs of the poorest of the poor in South America".
Strikingly unconventional in his public life, Cushing was the sort of man about whom a myriad of anecdotes were told. But, despite his convivial demeanor, he was often lonely. Renowned for his matter-of-fact speech, he was a man of simple piety and deep faith. Wonderfully unpretentious, he occasionally went beyond self-deprecation to declare that he did not really understand himself. The baffling complexity of his persona probably contributed to his impact on American life. This "tough-talking saint" succeeded in speaking to, and for, working-class Catholics in South Boston as well as the Kennedys; and he won the affection and trust of unprecedented numbers of non-Catholics.
He was disposed to exaggerate his intellectual limitations; spoke vigorously, frequently at great length and occasionally with a breathtaking casualness, about complex theological questions; lived and died indifferent to material possessions; and derived apparently endless gratification from mingling with people.
