Bishop McHugh, Who Will Succeed McGann as Head of Island's Diocese, Is a Man of Strong Convictions

By Bob Keeler
Newsday
February 21, 1999

Never hesitant to launch a telephonic lightning bolt against a critic, Gov. Mario Cuomo wasted no time putting in a call to an outspoken Catholic priest who had publicly criticized his landmark 1984 speech on abortion.

After all, this had not been just any old speech, but a historic event, unprecedented in American politics. The governor had invested an immense effort in thinking about it, consulting with theologians and toiling to produce what he hoped would be an intelligent political-theological analysis of the nation's most divisive issue. He wasn't running that year, but other politicians were, dogged by controversy over abortion and the wider issue of church-state relationships.

Cuomo delivered this lecture at one of the intellectual centers of the Catholic heartland, the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. The core of it was this: He agreed that abortion was wrong, but he insisted that dogma cannot force Catholic politicians to follow any specific path to ban abortion. "It is a matter of prudential political judgment," Cuomo said.

So, when he learned that a New Jersey priest named Msgr. James T. McHugh had criticized the speech, Cuomo picked up the phone. In this kind of telephone call, made often during his 12 years as governor, Cuomo was famously intense and articulate, unleashing a powerful torrent of words that could intimidate almost anyone.

"He thinks he can bully you," said McHugh, who was then running the Diocesan Development Program for Natural Family Planning for the nation's Catholic bishops. For his doctoral dissertation in Rome, McHugh had studied abortion and the law as carefully as anyone in America, and he was not about to be bullied. When Cuomo cited the Rev. John Courtney Murray, an eminent Jesuit expert on church-state issues and religious liberty, McHugh pounced.

"I said, 'Well, if you read John Courtney Murray, he doesn't say that, " McHugh recalled. "And that stopped him dead."

Though Cuomo does not remember all the details of that conversation, he recalls the tone. "I remember it was long, and he did a lot of the talking, and that he was not severe, but he was dead serious, and kind of relentless," Cuomo said.

Cuomo insists he refrained from using some of his most effective arguments, because they tend to irk the church hierarchy. "I mean I honestly did not try arguing with him," Cuomo recalled. As a result of Cuomo's uncharacteristic restraint and McHugh's love for a good debate, the priest got in enough of his own words to give the governor an impression.

"McHugh struck me as the kind of priest that the current Vatican wants as a bishop or a cardinal," Cuomo said, adding that McHugh was "in the mold" of today's conservative, strict-on-dogma prelates. "My own reaction in listening to him was that that's where he was, and he wasn't about to change." COMING FROM Cuomo, who elevated relentlessness to a high art form, phrases such as "kind of relentless" and "wasn't about to change" mean something. They mean McHugh is not a man to be taken lightly. Over the years, as a priest, monsignor and bishop, McHugh has made a name for himself as a clear Catholic voice against abortion and as a key international spokesman for the Vatican on world population.

Despite some sniping aimed his way by the most zealous anti-abortion activists, who dislike his approval of sex education in Catholic schools, he has established a reputation as a dogged anti-abortion advocate. That powerful voice comes in a small package. Though he remains in robust health by jogging daily, biking often and eating a low-fat diet, McHugh is not a big man. He projects strength by the fierceness of his commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy and the tenacity of his views on life issues. Privately, one clergy colleague calls him "a pit bull."

Always willing to speak bluntly and for publication, McHugh has made a name for himself on such issues as insisting that the church should not bestow awards or honors on public officials who are both Catholic and support abortion rights, and approving the Southern Baptist statement last year that a wife should "submit herself graciously" to her husband. He leaves no doubt where he stands.

Now, starting with a welcoming mass Monday at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, McHugh becomes a man to be reckoned with here, a closely watched figure in one of the nation's largest Catholic dioceses. For about a year, he will serve as the coadjutor bishop - essentially an auxiliary bishop with the right of succession. Bishop John McGann turns 75, the mandatory retirement age, on Dec. 2. Once the Vatican formally accepts McGann's resignation, McHugh succeeds him and becomes the third bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

"I'm not the bishop until Bishop McGann steps down," McHugh said. In this interim year, he added, he will spend his time "getting around to see the diocese, trying as best I can to know the priests and have them know me, and then to be there and to work out a pastoral program for the next seven or eight years." THE ARRIVAL of a new bishop is always a major event, especially when the outgoing bishop has been a familiar figure for so long. McGann served as secretary and later as auxiliary bishop to Bishop Walter Kellenberg, the first bishop of Rockville Centre, then succeeded Kellenberg in 1976.

By the time he steps down late this year or early next, McGann will have run the diocese for almost 24 years. On Jan. 3, McHugh turns 68, seven years shy of mandatory retirement. So his tenure here will be much shorter than McGann's. In fact, some speculate that this is not his last job. Clearly a Vatican favorite, McHugh could end up in an even more influential position before he reaches the retirement age.

No one is better placed to know about such things than Cardinal John O'Connor of New York. These days, O'Connor has a front-row seat, as a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, a significant assignment that demonstrates the Vatican's confidence in O'Connor. But he was not always so close to the process. In the spring of 1983, for example, O'Connor became the bishop of Scranton and made it clear that he expected his ecclesiastical career to end right there in Pennsylvania.

"I announced to the people upon my arrival, with total sincerity, 'Whatever you hear to the contrary, I have come to Scranton to die, and I will die here very, very happily, " O'Connor recalled. Just seven months after his installation in Scranton, however, the Vatican appointed him to fill the vacancy left by the death of Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York. "So anything can happen."

That experience of uncertainty may turn out to be instructive in the case of McHugh, who arrives here after nearly a decade as the bishop of Camden, N.J. Before the Long Island assignment, rumors had him headed to archdioceses where the archbishop almost always earns the red hat of a cardinal, such as Philadelphia, Washington and New York.

"His appointment to Rockville Centre is a major appointment," O'Connor said. "It's a major diocese in the United States. Is it conceivable that even yet he might become an archbishop of an archdiocese? All things are conceivable." WHETHER THIS turns out to be a brief step on the way to greater glory or the capstone to McHugh's career, he has powerful backers who predict great things for the people of this diocese under his leadership.

"I'd say he's a very, very quick study," O'Connor said. "He will come to understand the issues in the diocese very well. He is a man who is deeply interested in the poor, and particularly in terms of health-care issues for the poor . . . I think that he'll bring a kindness, a sensitivity that will build on the kindness and sensitivity of one of the kindest and most sensitive bishops I think in the church, Bishop McGann."

O'Connor is not alone in his appreciation of McGann. "John's very beloved. John's a good friend of mine, and I have great affection for him," said Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark. The archbishop also knows McGann's successor, having chosen McHugh as a Newark auxiliary bishop in 1987. He believes his protege will serve the Catholics of Long Island well. "I think they're getting an articulate, committed and courageous shepherd," he said.

Long before either became a bishop, McGann recalls, he met McHugh at a New Hampshire summer camp for priests in the 1960s. As McHugh worked on the staff of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and later became a bishop, the two men have crossed paths regularly. So McGann admires his intelligence and experience, but the two men are very different.

To begin with, though McGann has spoken out often against abortion, he does not have the international experience or the reputation for single-minded focus that McHugh has acquired. They also have very different personal styles.

McGann can work a room like an Irish politician, with a warm personal approach. McHugh comes across differently in smaller settings. "He's not inclined to put himself forward in conversations, and he's not inclined in any way to put himself forward when you first meet him," said a friend, the Rev. Kevin McMahon, academic dean at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia.

"I guess he might be called a little on the reserved side, a little on the shy side," said McHugh's seminary classmate and close friend, the Rev. Benedict Militello, a pastor in Garfield, N.J. "There's nothing pompous or phony or put-on about him at all. What you see is what you get."

Once McHugh becomes more comfortable, he grows more garrulous. "I think on the initial exposure, I probably give the impression of being shy or withdrawn," McHugh said. "When I walked into a room, it would take me a few minutes to acclimate myself. But once I get to know people, once I strike up a conversation, then I'm more outgoing. So, the same person who might have thought I was withdrawn walking into the room would think that I was an extrovert going out of the room." THE TWO BISHOPS also have different management styles. McGann appoints people he trusts and allows things to happen. McHugh is more detail-oriented. "He's a very hands-on leader, and I mean that in every aspect, from parish visitations to confirmation ceremonies, installations of pastors and special events," said Msgr. Carl Marucci, McHugh's former secretary, now with the Vatican's mission to the United Nations.

McHugh tells a story that illustrates both his attention to detail and the importance of "priestly identity" to him. "I met one of our priests one day - a fairly good guy, a nice man - walking out of the hospital in complete civvies," McHugh said. "He had gone to visit somebody in the hospital. I called him up that night, and I said, 'John, when you're on duty, you wear clericals. You don't go in and out of that hospital in lay clothes. "

The new coadjutor's potential impact on priests (slightly more than 300 are active in parish work in the Diocese of Rockville Centre) has been a major focus of conversation here, ever since the Dec. 7 announcement of his appointment. Some local priests have friends in Camden or nearby dioceses who have called them to comment on McHugh's tough style and say essentially, as one priest recalled, "be afraid."

McHugh sees no reason for concern. "I don't think they should be afraid," McHugh said. "Obviously, I'm ultimately going to have some expectations that do not fit with their expectations or are different from whatever Bishop McGann's expectations are. I mean, you can't get a new bishop without some change."

For the Catholic priests of Rockville Centre, however, this is a delicate time for any kind of change. This spring, in keeping with the recent trend of small ordination classes, the diocese will ordain only one new priest, and the immediate prospects for priestly vocations do not look bright. "I think we're tired and dispirited and frightened to death about the vocation crisis," one pastor said. "I hope this guy is an inspiration for the promotion of vocations."

In addition to the small numbers of new priests, there are other unnerving signs. This year, as many as 13 or 14 of the 34 priests eligible for retirement are likely to retire. On top of that, in the past few weeks, a young pastor and a priest ordained just last June have both unexpectedly taken leaves of absence. Another priest, an associate pastor, has taken an unanticipated sabbatical. No one knows for certain that they will be back. Priests do ask for time away, but three in such a short time - including a newly ordained priest - is an unusually difficult setback.

All this makes it increasingly tricky for the diocese to fit the remaining priests into the right jobs. "Definitely, I would say it gets harder and harder to make ends meet," said Msgr. Francis Caldwell, the diocesan director for priest personnel.

One symptom is the increasing number of parishes with only one priest assigned. Currently, that includes 34 out of 134 parishes, and the number could go up by three more this spring. For those who remain, the demands on their time keep escalating. "I think down the road we're going to feel it a lot more," said Msgr. James Kelly, rector of St. Agnes Cathedral and chairman of a committee on priestly life and ministry.

Nor are the priests the only constituency watching carefully to see which way McHugh might lead. He has strong interests in areas such as the seminary and the Catholic colleges, because he had none of his own in Camden. McHugh is also an outspoken expert on medical ethics, coming into a situation where four Catholic hospitals have recently joined together in a single health system and are making alliances with secular hospitals.

So, most concerned Catholics here will want to know what McHugh is really like, but that is not simple. He is a man of more facets than most people know.

The same person who stood up pugnaciously to Mario Cuomo has shown great private gentleness in caring for the ill. The same McHugh who champions the church's teachings so steadfastly is also able to retain the goodwill of one theologian publicly disciplined by the church for his teaching.

Years ago, when he was working for the bishops conference in Washington, he argued regularly on a variety of issues with the Rev. Charles Curran, who subsequently lost his right to teach as a Catholic theologian because of his nuanced, dissenting views on sexual ethics. To this day, however, Curran senses that McHugh would be willing to sit down and talk over old times, and McHugh agreed. "By all means," McHugh said. "We could disagree, but we never departed from friendship."

Reactions to the mention of McHugh's name vary widely. Those on the liberal end of the Catholic spectrum roll the eyes and utter a tart "good luck." The more traditional and orthodox lavishly praise his fidelity and his intellectual gifts. "You can't quite totally pigeonhole him," Curran said. THE JOURNEY to priesthood began for McHugh in "The Oranges," a suburban setting in New Jersey's Essex County, outside Newark. Both his parents were raised in The Oranges, his mother from Italian roots and his father from Irish.

In a long, candid interview, one of the few questions that made McHugh hesitate was the one about how his Italian ancestry has affected his personality. "Maybe at times a little impatience," he finally offered, uncertainly. The bishop also cooks pasta at home in Blackwood, south of Camden. From his father, he picked up an ability to fix things.

"He worked in automobiles, he worked obviously in the defense plants during World War II, he mastered an electrician's work, he mastered plumbing work, painting and papering, those kinds of things," McHugh said. "I can't remember anything my father wouldn't take a crack at fixing." And to this day, the bishop will tackle just about any repair work around his home. "A little challenge like that is a wonderful distraction for me," McHugh said. "It's like playing cards. It takes your mind away from everything else."

His encouragement toward priesthood came from his elementary school, St. Venantius, in Orange. "We had wonderful nuns," McHugh recalled. "We had a very tough pastor, an old German, but he was a good man, a good priest. And the associate was a good man. So I began to think about it there."

Later, he attended the nearby Our Lady of the Valley High School and branched out into journalism. "We always called him 'Scoop McHugh," said Sister Margaret Fleming, general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill, who went to school with McHugh's only sibling, a younger sister, Sharon.

McHugh acquired this nickname by phoning in high school sports results to the Newark News, the Newark Star-Ledger and smaller local papers. "I got to be known in a little bit broader circle than just the high school I went to, which was a small high school," McHugh said. "I liked it." That was the start of a lifelong affinity for writing newspaper columns, both as a priest and later as a bishop.

After Seton Hall University, he completed his education for priesthood at the Immaculate Conception Seminary, at a former estate called Darlington in Mahwah, and was ordained in 1957. That summer, he had a brief stay in Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a heavily Italian parish in downtown Newark, then was transferred to Holy Trinity Parish in Fort Lee. It was there he began his concentration on family-life issues, which came to dominate his priesthood.

One of his early ministries was with young married couples. Charles and Gloria Quinn, one of the couples who befriended him, told their daughter Gail about their first impression of McHugh, on the floor of the church basement, working on something for a meeting. "My father said, 'Who's that new kid on the floor over there? " recalled Quinn, who later worked with McHugh in Washington and now serves as executive director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In addition to his ministry with married couples, McHugh developed the program for engaged couples, served Fort Lee's volunteer firefighters as an activist chaplain, spent a lot of his time in the parish's new school, and established a rapport with youth. "He jumped right in," Gail Quinn said. "He was a friend to most of the young people in the parish."

His down-to-earth style made quick and lasting connections. "Bishop McHugh has a knack for making friends easily, and I'd say keeping friends," Quinn said. "You don't meet people who say, 'I used to be a friend of Bishop McHugh's. " THE FOCUS ON FAMILY issues eventually launched McHugh into the hierarchy. First, his growing expertise brought him to the attention of Msgr. James Johnson, who ran the family-life office for the Archdiocese of Newark. Soon, McHugh was working with Johnson at the diocesan level, in addition to his parish duties.

That positioned him for the next step. In Washington, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops had a problem: Their key expert on family-life issues, Msgr. John Christopher Knott, was in deteriorating health and needed a full-time assistant. "It's hard to pull somebody out from another diocese who's already the full-time family-life director," McHugh said. "So what they did was they looked around for somebody who was younger and could be spared."

The answer turned out to be McHugh, with recommendations from Johnson and Archbishop Thomas Boland of Newark. In late 1965, not long before the final session of the Second Vatican Council, McHugh arrived in Washington. A few months later, Knott had a heart attack and returned home to Connecticut, leaving McHugh the primary spokesman for the nation's Catholic bishops on family life.

The day McHugh arrived in Washington, an old seminary friend of his, the Rev. Robert Hunt, who had dated McHugh's sister before studying for the priesthood, arrived on the faculty of the Catholic University of America.

Hunt became McHugh's main link to the faculty at the university, including Charles Curran. At the university and at the house where many of the staff on the bishops conference lived, McHugh found himself in a comfortable setting of both friendship and spirited debate on moral issues.

"I used to see quite a bit of Jim in those days," Curran recalled. "Jimmy, to his credit, was always reading things. He was a good reader. He read in the area of marriage and family. As a person, Jimmy is a scrappy street-fighter. Jimmy would like nothing better than to argue with you all night long."

Another of his debating partners was Msgr. George Higgins, a social-action expert. In 1976, for example, they discussed heatedly the bishops decision that President Gerald Ford's position on abortion was "acceptable," but Jimmy Carter's was not. Higgins opposed that stance. McHugh supported it. Despite their spirited debates in the staff house, Higgins admired him.

"We had a priest living with us who had Lou Gehrig's disease; McHugh took care of him almost to the bitter end," Higgins recalled. "Even when I disagreed with him on issues, I found him to be extremely compassionate and human."

Over the years, McHugh has continued to show that private compassion. Curran pointed out that McHugh has been a constant friend in a difficult time for Hunt, now out of the priesthood and married to Ann Murphy, one of McHugh's former aides. On his way to bishops meetings in Washington and at other times, McHugh has made it a point to stop often and visit Hunt in Baltimore during Hunt's struggle with acute leukemia, now in remission. "He's a wonderful, caring person," Hunt said.

McHugh also managed to keep himself connected with parish life. Most weekends, he commuted to St. Anthony's, a parish in Northvale, a then-rural corner of New Jersey's Bergen County, where his former Newark mentor, Johnson, was the pastor, and his close friend Militello was an associate pastor. McHugh would arrive on Saturdays, hear confessions, and celebrate mass Sundays.

"That was his purpose, was to not find himself completely stymied by a desk and a wall," said Militello, who still sees McHugh often. When they get together, the bishop usually does the cooking and often takes care of Mr. Fixit details. "The only time my car has ever been washed, the bishop washed it," Militello said. THOUGH HE CONTINUED to keep in touch with parish life, McHugh's work revolved primarily around Washington. At first, his responsibility at the bishops conference had focused on family issues. Later, he found himself broadening out to more international issues. "We saw the United States taking a very active role in promoting family planning and population control," McHugh said. With the approach of an international conference on those issues, planned for 1974, the bishops saw the need to respond. So, in late 1972, they established the Ad Hoc Committee on Population and Pro-Life Activities, and McHugh ran the staff.

The new committee's first major meeting was set for Chicago in January, 1973. But just before that, the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade, proclaiming a constitutionally protected right to abortion. McHugh was quickly at the center of the storm.

On the day of the decision, he was in Baltimore, away from his office. "They called me from the office, told me what happened; I got in the car, came back, I walked in and there were news people all over the place: radio, TV, reporters," McHugh recalled. "So I just methodically went through it."

From that time, McHugh began to develop a reputation as a fierce opponent of abortion. "I think he is acknowledged, both nationally and internationally, as one of the most vocal and articulate spokesmen among the bishops for the pro-life movement," said the Rev. Peter Stravinskas, editor of Catholic Answers, a national periodical. "There's no one in Rome who doesn't understand that he is a prime player for the pro-life movement."

Even Frances Kissling, one of the most outspoken voices on the abortion-rights side, acknowledged, "Certainly, in terms of his beliefs and his commitment to the issue, he's in the top ranks."

But Kissling has seen McHugh up close in his population work. (He represented the Vatican at population conferences in 1974, 1984 and in Cairo in 1994.) She does not admire his style.

"He's one of those people in the Vatican delegation that I've never viewed as somebody that I could speak to," Kissling said. "Every time I pass him, if looks could kill, I'd be dead. Others, especially those who actually come from the Vatican, are much more diplomatic."

Sally Ethelston of Population Action International also found McHugh less congenial than a Vatican official, Msgr. Diarmuid Martin, a close friend of McHugh. Recently, McHugh flew to Rome to attend Martin's ordination as a bishop. "I witnessed McHugh in action at the preparatory meetings for the Cairo conference and can only really say that he played bad cop to Diarmuid Martin's good cop," Ethelston said. "McHugh tended to be harsh, combative, very aggressive, rarely smiled."

If McHugh was too tough for Kissling and Ethelston, he hasn't been tough enough to please some in the anti-abortion movement.

One of his harshest critics is Randy Engel, founder and executive director of the U.S. Coalition for Life. In a self-published 1997 book, "The McHugh Chronicles," Engel said McHugh had used his position in the hierarchy to support sex education in the Catholic schools, "to create a false, controlled anti-abortion movement in the Church while sabotaging legitimate efforts within the Pro-Life Movement to stop the slaughter of innocent preborn children," and to "undermine the Catholic Church's magisterial teachings on contraception, divorce, abortion, prenatal diagnosis, eugenics and in vitro fertilization" among other things.

"For some reason or another, they hooked onto McHugh, because he didn't draw a physical sword and cut the heads off the people he dealt with," Hunt said. "This whole business of his being a bad guy, in terms of the far right, goes way back, and it's unintelligible to me. They seem to equate balance, good judgment and Christian charity as evil."

Perhaps the most important issue on which McHugh showed too much balance to suit Engel and others in the movement was the question of sex education. "He does have a track record, insofar as being one of the most staunch advocates of sex education within the Catholic Church," said Thomas Droleskey, an adjunct political-science professor at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University who writes often for The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic newspaper.

Like others in the hierarchy, McHugh sees no reason why children should not receive sex education in Catholic schools. But many anti-abortion activists oppose any sex education outside the home.

McHugh shrugs it all off, declining to rebut Engel's book because it would take too much time. "I met her once in New York and said to her something about, 'Randy, we may not agree, but it's silly to fight. After all, we're fighting the same enemy, " McHugh recalled. "And I said, 'Then, besides that, you have to try to approach some of these people and persuade them. She said, 'That's the difference between you and me. I'm not interested in dialogue. I'm interested in confrontation. " Engel said she does not recall the comment.

Whatever Engel and others think, McHugh's credentials are impeccable in the eyes of the Vatican. "It's amazing that these people who claim to be so faithful to the Holy Father then turn around and really do a job on somebody that the Holy See has so much confidence in," said Msgr. Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the nation's bishops.

In 1978, McHugh left the bishops conference and went to Rome for further graduate education. He had studied sociology at both Fordham University and Catholic University, completing all the course work for a master's degree but stopping before his thesis. In Rome from 1978 to 1981, he completed a doctoral dissertation on abortion and the law, in the light of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

When he returned to this country, he continued his involvement in life issues as the national director of the Diocesan Development Program for Natural Family Planning, based at Seton Hall University. Then, in 1987, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick chose him to be a Newark auxiliary bishop.

"I knew that he was a very articulate person, and that's important for a bishop," McCarrick said. "Secondly, I knew that he was very faithful man, faithful to the teaching of the church, faithful to the Gospel." As auxiliary, McHugh focused on such crucial ministries as Catholic Charities and education. "That was the area that Jim served in and served with great efficiency," McCarrick said. HE WASN'T THERE long. In 1989, McHugh was appointed bishop of Camden, a growing diocese that covers such demographically diverse areas as the farms of Salem County, the glitz-and-poverty mix of Atlantic City, the Victorian elegance of Cape May, and the declining inner city. "Camden is one of the poorest cities in America," said the Rev. Michael Doyle, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish there.

A grotesque illustration of that downtown decline followed the death of McHugh's predecessor, Bishop George Guilfoyle, whose retirement had created the opening for McHugh. As the late bishop lay in repose in the rectory adjoining the cathedral, someone broke in and stole the episcopal ring and cross from his lifeless body. Guilfoyle, a gruff churchman of the old school, had never been comfortable with reporters, but the press wrote extensively about the theft and the ultimate recovery of his symbols of office. "He went out in a glow of media affirmation," Doyle said.

Unlike Guilfoyle, McHugh had no qualms about dealing with the media (though he repeatedly pronounced it, oddly, as "MAY-dee-ah" during his initial news conference here in December). Later, in fact, he hired the first full-time public-relations person for the diocese, Susan Gibbs, who had previously worked for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

"I started the office of public relations in Camden at his request," said Gibbs, adding that his rationale was simply "the realization that the diocese was and is doing a lot of good work, but people don't really know about it."

One area of that good work focused on Camden itself. "He certainly cares about the city as much as he cares about the suburbs," Doyle said. "He always felt that the religious work and the social work of Catholic parishes in the inner city didn't get enough play in the media or didn't get enough recognition."

To meet the needs of the poor, Doyle and others forged links between inner-city parishes and the more affluent suburbs, with support from McHugh. "If there's a big apartheid wall between Camden and suburbia, let's breach it," Doyle said. "He always affirmed that."

McHugh has also underlined the importance of the inner city by moving the diocesan offices from the outer fringes of Camden to downtown, across the street from the cathedral, in space donated by a bank. "We wanted to make a statement with it, that we're interested in the city and we want to stay there, when of course so much has left," Doyle said. "It was his. He wanted to do that."

The diocese has also contributed significantly to a law center that helps the working poor and immigrants of Camden. So McHugh has compiled a record of concern for the poor at the diocesan level. At the national level, however, he has not staked out as strong a position on social justice as he has on abortion.

"He's certainly never been in the forefront of the peace issues," said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, one of the national leaders of Pax Christi, the Catholic peace movement. "I must say, he's never been among those who really were negative, either."

In Camden, McHugh convoked a diocesan synod (a diocese-wide meeting) to plan for the future. "It was composed of every aspect of the diocese - clergy, religious, laity - very much involving the input from the parishes, to assess the needs, where we were as a diocese," said Marucci, McHugh's former secretary. "We are really indebted to him for the blessing of that synod." Given that history, it would not be out of character for McHugh to offer the same opportunity to the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which has never had such a synod.

Planning for the future, McHugh has also placed strong emphasis on priestly vocations and the education of Camden's seminarians. Since Camden has no seminary of its own, most of its seminarians attend St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. One evidence of McHugh's commitment to priestly formation has been the full-time assignment of a Camden priest to St. Charles as a liaison with the diocese's seminarians. "That is very unusual," said the Rev. Louis Marucci, the vocations director in Camden and the brother of Carl, McHugh's former secretary.

Under McHugh, the diocese has established a careful screening program, with psychological, medical and other components. Before a man can go into the formal application process, he must spend six months to a year in a "discernment group," examining his calling to priesthood.

"Bishop McHugh has enabled us to really tighten our formation program," Louis Marucci said. "So when Bishop McHugh calls a man to orders, Bishop McHugh knows everything about that man."

The bishop also makes sure the seminarians know what he thinks about priesthood. When the controversial television series "Nothing Sacred" aired, presenting an irreverent young liberal priest as the hero, McHugh left no doubt that it did not convey his image of priesthood. "He made such a strong statement against that series that it turned people's heads, and appropriately so," Louis Marucci said. "That was not what priesthood is all about."

More recently, McHugh met with his seminarians and explained his view of the priesthood. As Louis Marucci recalled, this was the message: "The priesthood is not a platform for an individual's self-expression. The priest is a reflection of the presence of God in the world and is a definite part of the church, and every time a priest acts, he acts in the name of the church. The second thing is there is a strong need for obedience."

For nearly a decade, McHugh has managed Camden through a time of great change. "People who have been here a long time can tell you about this city as a major city," McHugh said. "It's not a major city right now." Elsewhere in the diocese, change has also swept across the farmland and the shore. During that time, McHugh likes to say, Camden has experienced some growth in the Catholic school system, one of the issues McHugh emphasizes.

"We're on the drawing boards now for two new grade schools," McHugh said. "We've expanded a number of others. We've added to one of our high schools."

Running those schools has not always been smooth. In 1994, Catholic-school teachers struck, out of concern about proposed new contract language that McHugh would be the "ultimate judge" if teachers rejected church doctrine or "policies of the Diocese of Camden as stated by the Bishop." Teachers feared that would allow him to fire them almost on a whim. Ultimately, they accepted the language, after the diocese had altered it to make clear the policies in question related to doctrine, not to other, secular issues.

In 1991, McHugh had told teachers he was new, and he needed time to address their concerns. "We gave him time, we gave him time, we gave him time," said William Blumenstein, president of the South Jersey Catholic School Teachers Organization. "We still didn't see where our needs were being met, financially or otherwise." The teachers also struck in 1997, over economic issues.

The union primarily represents high school teachers, with only a few members in elementary schools. "He has stood staunchly opposed to unionization in the elementary schools," Blumenstein said, characterizing McHugh as a tough adversary. "If I had to give him credit for anything, it's that he might have had public opinion against him, and the teachers against him, but he stood his ground." LIKE OTHER BISHOPS, McHugh has also weathered his share of storms over clergy sexual abuse. The diocese has had to pay about $ 3 million in settlements, but in 1994, McHugh announced the diocese would fight the claims in court instead of settling them privately.

"We recognize that people have a right to legal representation and court process," McHugh wrote then. "If they choose that path, the diocese also has a right and obligation to defend itself vigorously and to use all the legal defenses available to it . . . " That's what Camden has done.

"He got very stiff-necked," said Stephen Rubino, an attorney for sexual-abuse victims in Camden. "If you look at the four years of litigation on these issues, we have concentrated on statutes of limitation and defenses to avoid liability at the diocesan level, and we have not dealt at all with the merits."

One abuse survivor is the Rev. Gary Hayes. Well before McHugh became bishop in Camden, the diocese asked Hayes to finish his training elsewhere - away from the Rev. Joseph McGarvey, the priest he accused of abusing him. "Basically, what they were saying is they were keeping McGarvey, a child abuser, rather than somebody who has been abused," Hayes said.

Ordained in 1990, Hayes pastors three small parishes in Kentucky, but he has been back to Camden and met with McHugh, explaining his own case and asking about the status of McGarvey (now retired). "He was very friendly and welcoming and stuff like that, but I got the distinct impression he didn't really get what I was saying," Hayes said. And in a newspaper column, Hayes said, McHugh took a tough attitude. "Bishop McHugh described attempts of survivors to get a hearing as a new kind of terrorism in the church."

Through his Camden years, McHugh has continued to make public statements on controversial issues, such as his tough position on Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.

"He basically said that no one who visibly and vocally stands in opposition to church teachings should ever be given honors, awards or recognition," said Carl Marucci, who arranged the news conference at which McHugh announced this policy. "He was the first to take a stance like that. Others have followed him since."

In the aftermath of the policy, New Jersey Gov. James Florio, a Catholic and an abortion-rights supporter, resigned in 1990 from the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal organization. Though Florio said he didn't know how much McHugh's policy had to do with it, he was uncomfortable with the embarrassment that his membership was causing the Knights, who had previously asked him to speak. "It was just getting to be too difficult for the people who had me there," Florio said. MORE RECENTLY, McHugh raised eyebrows when he issued a public affirmation of a statement by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1998, that a wife should "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership, as St. Paul commands in his letter to the Ephesians.

In the fifth chapter of Ephesians, one of the most influential Pauline letters, the author exhorts the early Christians to turn aside from pagan ways, and then he describes the proper demeanor for a Christian household. Though the Baptists said men and women have equal worth before God, they said women should submit to the "servant leadership" of husbands, as the church submits to the leadership of Christ.

"What they were trying to say - that is, in terms of the values - made a lot of sense," McHugh said. "It's certainly countercultural, because today, it's politically incorrect to say the things that Ephesians 5 says. But if you took a look at Ephesians 5 and read all of the scholarship around Ephesians 5, it's not that strong an anti-feminist statement. It's actually a statement moving towards harmony between the sexes."

McHugh also speaks out forcefully on medical ethics. For example, he has argued publicly against the removal of artificial means of delivering food and water to patients, unless they are unconscious and imminently dying. To those who say this withdrawal allows patients to die with dignity, McHugh argues that, in many cases, "discontinuing nutrition and hydration does not simply allow the patient to die from some existing pathology, but introduces a new cause of death, that is, starvation and dehydration."

For now, the debate has not been settled, but McHugh's views remain crystal clear. "On these issues, Bishop McHugh has been really a national leader in terms of the most conservative position," said John Mitchell, chairman of the department of biomedical ethics at Seton Hall University. "Happily, his position has not prevailed."

At Seton Hall, McHugh sits on the board of regents, because he is the bishop of Camden. He is a member of the academic-affairs committee, which gives him an opportunity to grant or refuse tenure and make other personnel decisions. On a variety of issues, his outspokenness leads people to suspect his connection to some university actions, such as a 1998 decision not to let Seton Hall's law school give an award to Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a supporter of abortion rights, on university property.

Whether McHugh sways such decisions or not, some on campus are wary of his influence. "How will he react is always the question," said Philip Kayal, a sociology professor, "and he'll always react negatively, resisting change."

For the future, everything about McHugh's history dictates that he will keep on doing what he has done: speaking out on issues and representing the Vatican position on population, abortion and life issues around the world.

"He flies to Rome more often than I go to Hoboken," said Militello, his close friend. "I've never heard him complain about jet lag, even when he went to Cairo or Mexico. He seems to travel extremely well . . . He loves his work, and he loves the church, and therefore he overcomes all of these difficulties that most of us would have."

Once he arrives here, McHugh will not curtail that travel. "I will continue to do those things, because a bishop's not only ordained for a diocese; he's ordained for the universal church," McHugh said. "The population thing is something where I have an enormous experience. There's probably only three or four people in the whole Vatican bureaucracy who have the same experience. And then there's maybe 10 or 12 beyond that that we can rely on."

Here, as he has in Camden and Washington, McHugh is likely to evoke such sharply contrasting reactions that it sometimes seems people are talking about two different men. One clear example of the dichotomy is two men he has known since the seminary, Bob Hunt and Russell Ruffino. Both left the Roman Catholic priesthood. Ruffino also left the church, becoming first an Episcopalian and now an Episcopalian priest in Rhode Island.

"I think there are few people who represent what and where the Roman Catholic Church is now as well as he does," Ruffino said. "If I were going to write a dictionary and we were going to put in there 'Roman Catholic Church, hierarchy, I might put a picture of Jim McHugh . . . I thank God that he's not my bishop, but then again, I thank God that no Roman bishop is my bishop."

In contrast, Hunt has stayed in the church, remained close to McHugh, and continues endlessly bullish on his friend the bishop. "They are really blessed to have him," Hunt said. "It's the best episcopal appointment in the past 25 years." Tomorrow: McHugh Faces A Shortage of Priests and Changes To Catholic Charities, Hospitals.

GRAPHIC: 1) Newsday Cover Photo / Ken Spencer - Bishop James McHugh, says farewell to Camden, N.J., faithful before heading to Long Island. 2) Newsday File Photo / David L. Pokress - LINE OF SUCCESSION. When Bishop John McGann, right, reaches retirement age in December, Bishop James McHugh will succeed him as head of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. 3) Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer - LEAVE-TAKING. James McHugh, ending his nearly decade-long tenure as Bishop of Camden, bids farewell to nuns from Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Cherry Hill. 4) Photo- STARTING OUT. James McHugh as a young priest in 1959, two years after his ordination. 5) Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer - A HANDS-ON BISHOP. McHugh distributes Communion to a parishioner at St. Agnes Church in Blackwood, N.J., south of Camden. 6) Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer - PARTING WORDS. McHugh delivers homily during mass at St. Agnes in honor of his leaving. 7) Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer- HAIL AND FAREWELL. An honor guard of the Knights of Columbus pays tribute to Bishop McHugh at his departing ceremonies at St. Agnes. 8) Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer - MOVING ON. McHugh, leaving St. Agnes and Camden, heads for his career on Long Island.