Joseph Dever > Quotes

“The Cardinal thinks parents could draw a good lesson from his father and this anxious B. C. High experience. "Parents have the feeling that unless their children get high marks, their tuition money is being wasted. This isn't necessarily true. Some kids, temporarily or permanently, simply don't have the brain-power for high scholastic honors. If they're high-pressured Toward this impractical goal they sometimes get discouraged and quit. If they're told to do the best they can they usually keep plugging and get by.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“Bishop Cushing concluded the eulogy by citing a piece of verse, the author of which is not named. It is a genuine and accurate tribute to Cardinal O'Connell's memory: Were a star quenched on high, For years would its light Still streaming from the sky Fall on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men. And that was the farewell the heir-apparent said to his first superior, William Henry Cardinal O'Connell.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“his alleged interest in the political destruction of a prominent Catholic District Attorney named Pelletier, from Boston's Suffolk County.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“The Cardinal also worries, in this connection, about "the breakdown of family piety and parental discipline over children.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“As a consequence, it was his opinion even then, however discreetly expressed to his trusted colleagues, that the successor to Cardinal O'Connell would have to build at least eighty-five new parishes and raise millions of dollars a year. "I told them: 'I don't know where he is going to get it.'' His colleagues laughed at him. "I know what I'm talking about," was his answer. "I have been around this place . . ." Apparently Cushing did know what he was talking about. To date, as Boston's Cardinal, he has built at least eighty new parishes and twenty new high schools. He confesses to handling over eight million dollars a year to expedite all phases of Archdiocesan business.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“In early 1962, he defended his friend and loyal supporter, Boston Police Commissioner Leo Sullivan and his beloved Boston policemen in the face of the embarrassing television evidence of the Key Shop Bookie operation which showed Boston policemen entering the shop during book-making hours.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait

“Few men will anything very strongly, and out of these few, only a tiny minority are capable of combining strength of will with unwavering continuity," Aldous Huxley tells us. "It is for this reason that a strenuous and unwearying will sometimes becomes so tremendous a power, almost a hypnotic force.”
― Joseph Dever, Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait