The Catholic Thing reviews John Allen's book on Cdl. elect T. Dolan.

Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan of New York is becoming the most visible Catholic churchman in the Western Hemisphere. He is also a down-to-earth pastor – a clavicle-crushing six-foot-three teddy bear of a man whom you meet for the first time and, ten minutes later, feel you’ve known for a decade. I’ve met other archbishops and cardinals, and not one has impressed me as so thoroughly in love with the People of God as is the tenth archbishop of New York.

And this is essentially the conclusion of A People of Hope, by the National Catholic Reporter’s John L. Allen, Jr. – a book-length interview with Archbishop Dolan. Mr. Allen writes that his literary model is The Ratzinger Report (1984), but Vittorio Messori’s interview with Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was a broadside against the “hermeneutic of rupture” after Vatican II.

Allen acknowledges that his book is more anecdotal and less doctrinal: that A People of Hope intends to be upbeat – about “what Catholicism is for rather than what it’s against,” which seems a backhanded slap at the man who is currently pope – who’ll present the red hat to Dolan next month.

Tim Dolan, as Mr. Allen insists on calling him, is nobody’s typical archbishop.

continue at The Catholic Thing

HT Dad29