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This I-am-the-law approach was too much for the Priests' Senate and the Association of Chicago Priests, an independent group that has tangled with the cardinal before. The association's leaders declared, "In the ultimate analysis, we are not working for Cardinal Cody. We work for the Lord and for his people, especially for the poor." The protest was joined by acid-penned Sociologist and Journalist Father Andrew Greeley, who wrote in the July-August issue of the association's newsletter that Cody is a "madcap tyrant who has been imposed upon us ... Manly, forthright and honest dialogue" has failed, he said, and all that can be hoped for now is Cody's removal by higher-ups. "The days of the present administration may well be numbered," wrote Greeley. "Its madness is well known in other parts of the church. One cannot imagine that higher ecclesiastical authorities will permit it to last much longer."
At least 20 priests are known to have written Rome about the problem, and the officers of the Priests' Senate have discussed various kinds of appeals. They decided that the uproar from such tactics would only harm the church. Senate President Raymond Goedert, a nationally recognized expert on canon law who has emerged as the major counterforce to Cody in Catholic Chicago, seems to be advocating some such action however. "It is my opinion," he wrote to members of the senate, "that we are faced with a pastoral problem of serious proportion, and the only way to a peaceful solution would be through the help of higher authority."
The school board, in charge of the city's 478 parochial schools, is equally perturbed. Its chairman, Management Consultant Vito Petruzelli, sent to Chicago-area parishioners a letter saying that Cody had "systematically suppressed" the board and had made false statements to it in two instances. Unless Cody responds to its satisfaction, the school board is threatening to suspend itself indefinitely in protest when it meets this week. The Priests' Senate may do the same in September.
Cody, 67, would normally stay in office untU he is 75. If pressures against him continue to build, the Vatican will probably move slowly and very reluctantly and give him, perhaps, a post in Rome. The cardinal, who had a mild heart attack in May, has been on a vacation since June 30, and only his closest associates know his whereabouts. They say he will be back in town some time soon to take charge of what is, by all accounts, a deteriorating situation.