When President Bush deployed the first veto of his presidency on a bill that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research last week, Edward Cardinal Egan was not available for comment. A few weeks earlier, after New York’s highest court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage, the cardinal, spending two weeks in Vatican City for a series of meetings, was silent.

Had Cardinal Egan’s predecessor, John Cardinal O’Connor, been at the helm of the powerful Archdiocese of New York, some said, decisions about embryonic stem cell research or gay unions, both of which the Catholic Church explicitly opposes, might have warranted a public statement, even a press conference where reporters could all but count on a witticism or two.

Cardinal Egan is 74, and papal law requires bishops to submit an offer of resignation at age 75, when the pope can accept or reject the proposition.

If Benedict XVI were to review Cardinal Egan’s record now, he’d find that the cardinal has erased the archdiocese of New York’s $20 million annual operating deficit, in part by making tough decisions such as closing 16 diocese schools. He’d also find that Cardinal Egan, the former bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., keeps a more modest public profile than did O’Connor, who led the Archdiocese of New York for 16 years until his death in 2000.

The sprawling archdiocese is home to about 2.5 million Catholics, and comprises Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx, in addition to Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester counties.

The editor in chief of a New York-based religion journal, First Things, Father Richard John Neuhaus, said the cardinal’s priority seems to be reconciling church finances. He praised the cardinal for facilitating a smooth church realignment, including school closings, which has been “relatively peaceful” when compared to diocese shake-ups in cities like Boston, Detroit, and Cleveland.

Father Neuhaus, speaking by phone from Krakow, Poland, where he teaches during the summer, said he knows of few people who have cultivated an intimate personal relationship with Cardinal Egan. “He seems to have great confidence in his own judgment,” he said. “New York is the capital of the world, and it’s certainly the communications capital of the world. It strikes many people as strange that the institutional leadership personified in the archbishop of New York is largely absent from public life. I, too, think that is missed.”

Being an extrovert is not a prerequisite for Cardinal Egan’s job, an area Catholic lay leader, Peter Flanigan, who lives in Manhattan, said. “Cardinal Egan wouldn’t get up with a Yankees’ baseball cap while giving a homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he wouldn’t stand on a soapbox at the strike of Daily News typesetters,” Mr. Flanigan said, referring to two of O’Connor’s headline-making feats. “It is a legitimate comment that Cardinal Egan is less gregarious, and that people find him somewhat less easy to relate to, but I have always found him to be an extremely warm and compassionate human being.”

A founder and board member of two programs that subsidize Catholic School tuition for poor, inner-city students, Mr. Flanigan has worked closely with Cardinal Egan since the latter was the New York Archdiocese’s Vicar for Education in the 1980s. Mr. Flanigan hailed Cardinal Egan’s efforts to confront the debt that the church had incurred under the leadership of his predecessor. “Cardinal Egan turned that around, cutting expenses and raising money,” he said. “Neither of those seem like very pastoral activities, but they are the responsibility of the cardinal.”

Calling Cardinal Egan “a good CEO,” another New York Catholic who had spent 17 years as a brother in the Marist order before retiring, Francis Sheridan, said the cardinal’s leadership style reflects his formation, working for 14 years as a Vatican Court judge. “He was trained in the bureaucracy of the Vatican,” Mr. Sheridan said. “He wasn’t trained as a pastor. I don’t think he looks for wisdom from the bottom — not from the lay people and not from the clergy.”

An archdiocese spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said Cardinal Egan’s personality and leadership style differ from his predecessor. “Any religious leader needs to be true to himself, and be genuine and sincere in his own beliefs,” he said. “Cardinal O’Connor wouldn’t have been successful trying to be like Cardinal Cooke,” — who preceded him — “and Cardinal Egan is not Cardinal O’Connor. He is who he is.”

Mr. Zwilling said the cardinal is committed to improving the financial wellbeing of the diocese and to moving resources to stay current with demographic shifts. The archdiocese eradicated its $20 million annual operating deficit within two years of Cardinal Egan’s appointment and is now paying down the money it owes to the church’s loan fund, he said.

Mayor Koch was close friends with O’Connor — the two dined together about six times a year, and, co-authored “His Eminence and Hizzoner: A Candid Exchange,” in 1989. He said he has great respect for the current cardinal. “He doesn’t have the same charisma, but intelligence, courage, integrity — he has all of that,” Mr. Koch said. “Did people respond more warmly to one over the other? Yes, to Cardinal O’Connor. But do people have a sense of respect and affection for Cardinal Egan? Yes, it’s just different.”

It’s a mistake to judge Cardinal Egan by the “headlines he makes,” a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said. “There is no single mold of a cardinal,” he said. “It’s like corporations. Some have charismatic CEOs like Lee Iacocca, and some have quieter, behind-the-scenes leaders. That doesn’t necessarily make one more effective than the other.”

Howard Rubenstein, whose public relations firm handles press for the archdiocese, said the contrast between Cardinal Egan and O’Connor is marked. “Possibly, more people had personal access to the other cardinal,” he said. “It’s two absolutely different styles. Same religion, different people.”

Mr. Rubenstein applauded Cardinal Egan for his absolute devotion to the church, his graciousness, quiet humor, and humility. “I’ll say, ‘Why don’t you do this or that?’ and he’ll say, ‘I’d rather not,'” said Mr. Rubenstein, at whose home the cardinal, a classical pianist, has played. “I’m in the publicity business, and I’m impressed with his modesty. He holds back. He’s not a showboat.”

A Catholic priest and theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, Richard McBrien, said Cardinal Egan “is obviously different from Cardinal O’Connor in preferring anonymity over the public stage. Indeed, he seems to have made only a slight impact in New York and even less nationally. I assume that’s exactly the way he wants it.”

The pastor emeritus of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Tappan, N.Y., John Dwyer, who has met with Cardinal Egan four times, said though the leader may not wow crowds, one-on-one or in small groups he is warm and personable. “He does the job as well as you can do it, but the expectations are somewhat unrealistic,” said. “We look back fondly on the past, and say, ‘Why can’t he be like his predecessor?’ It’s the incumbent that takes the heat, and only later can we say that he did a good job — all things considered.”

A spokesman for the conservative Catholic lay organization, Opus Dei, Peter Bancroft, said the cardinal is competent and likeable. “People who have had an opportunity to talk to him know he’s very personable and kind,” he said.

At Fordham University’s Francis and Ann Curran Center for Catholic Studies, the co-director, James Fisher, said some of the cardinal’s detractors might be forgetting the controversies that at times marked O’Connor’s career. Shortly after he was appointed to lead the New York Archdiocese, there was a public feud with then Governor Cuomo, after O’Connor said he would not rule out excommunicating the governor because the politician favored abortion rights; and a comment conflating abortion with the Holocaust, angering Jewish leaders.

“There’s always a tendency to soften things in retrospect,” Mr. Fisher said. Despite a rocky start, Catholic-Jewish relations flourished during O’Connor’s tenure. The cardinal was recognized for his efforts to establish diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, which were formalized in 1993; and for his public statement to the Jewish community six years later, expressing “abject sorrow for any member of the Catholic Church, high or low, including myself, who may have harmed you or your forebears in any way.”

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, praised O’Connor’s commitment to bolstering the relationship between Catholics and Jews. “That’s a hard act to follow,” he said.

Mr. Foxman said Cardinal Egan’s May address at the Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, lacked substance. In the speech, the Catholic leader joked about acquiring a taste for smoked salmon and gefilte fish. “His presence, being invited and accepting the invitation, is more significant that the message he delivered,” Mr. Foxman said.

Cardinal Egan, while more reserved, is a good friend of the Jewish community, Mr. Foxman said. “He’s not demonstrably warm and fuzzy, and that’s okay as long as the essence is respect and appreciation for each other,” he said. “That’s what really counts — not theatrics. I know some people miss the theatrics.”

The Curran Center’s Mr. Fisher said he does not see the contrast in personality or leadership style as emblematic of any major shift within the Catholic Church or the Archdiocese of New York, where the cardinal’s residence has long been known as “the Powerhouse.” “There’s no reason to think we won’t see another highly charismatic cardinal in New York,” he said. “I don’t think we’re necessarily moving away from that.”

But others say the era of the enchanting, larger-than-life cardinals with ostensibly unlimited access to the political powers-that-be is over. The editor of the biweekly Catholic opinion journal, Commonweal, Paul Baumann, said the shift has everything to do with the demographic profile of America’s Catholics. “It has changed so dramatically, “Mr. Baumann said.”It’s no longer an ethnic subculture; it’s no longer largely an urban community — like everyone else, they’ve taken off for the suburbs; it’s no longer a largely poor and working class community, for whom the Catholic Church historically provided schooling, and jobs and hospitals. That world has disappeared, and with it that temporal political power of the cardinal.”