Backward Glances by Conrad Black

Author:Conrad Black [Black, Conrad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2016-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

REMEMBRANCE OF EMMETT CARDINAL CARTER

National Post, April 12, 2003

You lost your brother [last year] and you’re about to lose another brother.” With these selfless words, Emmett Cardinal Carter began our last conversation, in his suite in the Cardinal Carter Wing of St. Michael’s Hospital a few weeks before he died. He was by then terribly frail but completely sensible and of firm voice.

We conversed easily for half an hour, as we had more than a thousand times before over the last twenty-five years. He was, as always, well-informed, and we ranged over many subjects, from Iraq to our company. He had done us the unique honour of becoming a director of Argus Corporation when he retired as archbishop of Toronto and remained so to the end.

Finally there came the moment I had dreaded for years, but which I could not dodge or defer, to say goodbye. I managed the hope that I could call on him again when next in Toronto, as I always did. But I had to tell him that his friendship was one of the great joys and privileges of my life and that no one had ever had a dearer, wiser, more constant friend than he.

His sage response was very affecting. I asked him the state of his morale. “Excellent,” he said. He felt no fear and had no significant regrets, was thankful for the great life he had had but already somewhat detached from it.

I asked if he was curious about what lay before him. “Yes, I am very curious. Given my occupation, it would be astonishing if it were otherwise.”

When the news of his death arrived, by now so long expected but so hard to accept, I thought of our conversations of twenty years ago, often enhanced by considerable quantities of his very good claret, that led to my becoming a co-religionist of his. I told him then, under questioning, that I was satisfied that miracles sometimes occurred and that therefore, logically, any miracle could occur, even scientifically improbable ones like the virgin birth and the physical ascension of Christ. He replied that if our conversations were going to lead to a clear conclusion, I had to believe in one specific miracle.

“If the Resurrection did not occur,” said the cardinal, “all Christianity is a fraud and a trumpery.” Already in his seventies, he had bet his life on that proposition. He acknowledged it cheerfully, unshakeable in his faith, but making no effort to exterminate doubt.

Whether in the most informal discussion or on great public occasions, he always knew when to be flexible, when humorous, when unyielding. Even in the winter of his days, labouring under the effects of his stroke in 1980, he was never inept or inarticulate.

And he had an effortless sense of humour. When he stayed with my family and me in the opulent community of Palm Beach, Florida, I asked him on a particularly agreeable afternoon, overlooking the ocean, if this was anything like his vision of heaven. Without hesitation he replied, “If you substitute angels for helicopters, it might be an approximation.

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