341 Witness of Vatican II

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RECLAIMING CATHOLICISM
Treasures Old and New
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RECLAIMING CATHOLICISM
Edited by
THOMAS H. GROOME
and
MICHAEL J. DALEY
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Founded in 1970, Orbis Books endeavors to publish works that enlighten the mind, nour-
ish the spirit, and challenge the conscience. The publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers
and Brothers, Orbis seeks to explore the global dimensions of the Christian faith and mis-
sion, to invite dialogue with diverse cultures and religious traditions, and to serve the cause
of reconciliation and peace. The books published reflect the views of their authors and do
not represent the official position of the Maryknoll Society. To learn more about Maryknoll
and Orbis Books, please visit our website at www.maryknollsociety.org.
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas H. Groome and Michael J. Daley.
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0302.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
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Manufactured in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reclaiming Catholicism : treasures old and new / edited by Thomas H. Groome and
Michael J. Daley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57075-863-8 (pbk.)
1. Catholic Church—United States. 2. United States—Church history. I. Groome,
Thomas H. II. Daley, Michael J., 1968–
BX1406.3.R43 2010
282'.73—dc22
2009034705
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Contents
Preface
—Thomas H. Groome .........................................................ix
Introduction:
A Generation X Catholic: “Back in the Day” Is Not My Day
—Michael J. Daley ..........................................................xv
PART I: PERSPECTIVES
1. Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward:

A Pervasive Faith
—James D. Davidson .......................................................3
2. Becoming a Theologian:
Ressourcement, Personal and Ecclesial
—Francine Cardman.........................................................8
3. Studying the Bible, Then and Now
—Dianne Bergant, C.S.A................................................13
4. Jesus: A Change in Emphasis
—Luke Timothy Johnson ...............................................18
5. The Church: Catholicism Before and After Vatican II
—Richard P. McBrien.....................................................22
6. The Mass: Heaven on Earth
—John F. Baldovin, S.J. .................................................27
7. The Humbling of the Priesthood
—Donald Cozzens .........................................................32
8. Catholics among Southern Neighbors in the 1950s
—Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C. .....................................................37
v
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vi CONTENTS
9. Our Ancestors Would Be Incredulous:

Vatican II and the Religious Other
—Mary C. Boys, S.N.J.M...............................................42
10. The Pre–Vatican II Church and Women:
—Susan A. Ross .............................................................47
11. Sin: “Don’t Lose All That Old Time Catholic Guilt”
—Charles E. Curran .......................................................51
12. From the Treasury of Vowed Women Religious:
The Past Remembered, the Present Embraced
—Christine Vladimiroff, O.S.B. ......................................56
13. The Pre–Vatican II Parish:
Haven in a Heartless World
—James J. Bacik .............................................................61
14. Catholic Teaching on Sexuality:
From Romanticism to Reality
—Christine E. Gudorf ....................................................67
15. The Afterlife:
Death, Judgment, Purgatory, Heaven, Hell
—Zachary Hayes, O.F.M................................................72
PART II: PERSONALITIES
16. John Courtney Murray:

Theologian of Religious Freedom
—David Hollenbach, S.J. ...............................................79
17. Leonard Feeney: In Memoriam
—Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J...........................................84
18. Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C.:
Woman of Faith and Vision
—Gail Porter Mandell ....................................................88
19. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Communion with God through the Earth
—John F. Haught ..........................................................93
20. Thomas Merton: Monk and Prophet for the World
—Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. ...............................................99
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CONTENTS vii
21. Virgil Michel and Godfrey Diekmann:

“Full, Active, and Conscious Participation”
—Mary Collins, O.S.B..................................................104
22. Fulton J. Sheen: “The Man with Hypnotic Eyes”
—Mark Massa, S.J. .......................................................109
23. John Tracy Ellis: Historian and Priest
—Thomas J. Shelley .....................................................115
24. Father Charles E. Coughlin: “The Radio Priest”
—Mary Christine Athans, B.V.M. .................................120
25. Monsignor George Higgins and Monsignor. John Ryan:
Public Intellectuals and Social Reformers
—Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M........................................125
26. Mary Perkins Ryan:
Loyal and Prophetic Woman of the Church
—Padraic O’Hare .........................................................130
27. Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D. de Namur:
Passionate Voice for Justice
—Mary E. Hines ..........................................................136
28. African American Catholics: Witnesses to Fidelity
—Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. ...............................................141
29. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin:
Twentieth-century Prophets
—Robert Ellsberg.........................................................147
30. Mary Luke Tobin, S.L.:
About Her Father’s/Mother’s Business
—Theresa Kane, R.S.M. ...............................................152
31. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.:
Leadership Spanning Two Centuries
—Richard P. McBrien...................................................156
PART III: PRACTICES
32. Questions and Answers—Again—

from the Baltimore Catechism—
—Thomas H. Groome .................................................163
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viii CONTENTS
33. Catholic Schools: Daily Faith

—Karen M. Ristau........................................................169
34. Amica Fidelis, Ora Pro Nobis—
Devotion to Mary
—Ada María Isasi-Díaz .................................................174
35. Contraception:
Conflict and Estrangement in the Recent Catholic Past
—Leslie Woodcock Tentler ...........................................179
36. The Last Sacrament:
From Extreme Unction to the Anointing of the Sick
—William Madges ........................................................185
37. All the Angels and Saints:
What Happened to Them?
—Dolores R. Leckey ....................................................190
38. Catholic Eucharist, before and after Vatican II
—Richard Rohr, O.F.M................................................195
39. First Confession:
“Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned”
—Kate Dooley, O.P. .....................................................200
40. Asceticism: Then and Now
—Wilkie Au..................................................................204
41. The Rosary: “A Treasure to Be Rediscovered”
—Thomas H. Groome .................................................209
42. Catholics Growing Up:
The Legion of Decency
—Richard A. Blake, S.J.................................................215
43. The Angelus: Praying throughout the Day
—Bishop Robert F. Morneau .......................................219
44. The Eucharistic Fast: A Long Past into the Present
—Berard L. Marthaler, O.F.M. Conv............................224
45. Lent: No Feasting without Fasting
—Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I...........................................228
Contributors................................................................................233
Index ...........................................................................................243
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Preface
THOMAS GROOME
This book mines the treasury of pre–Vatican II American Catholi-

cism for the spiritual riches to be gleaned from its perspectives, person-
alities, and popular practices. The American Catholic community prior
to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) can be numbered among
the most vital expressions of Catholicism in the history of the church.
It was a vast network of vibrant parishes, with myriad associations, or-
ganizations, and impressive plants as well as overflowing Sunday Mass
attendance; it boasted as many as eight million students enrolled in
Catholic schools, the largest independent educational system in the
history of the world; it sponsored a huge coalition of hospitals and so-
cial services, fraternities and sororities; it had priests, sisters, and
brothers galore, enough to export thousands as missionaries, while its
seminaries and novitiates were bulging at the seams. “They” must
have been doing something very right back then. Of course, that was
then, and this is now; yet, it is surely true that reclaimed spiritual wis-
dom from that era can enrich the faith lives of Catholics today.
Reclaiming—Not Regressing
I grew up on an Irish farm that had a bog across the way. For hun-
dreds of years, that bog provided good turf to heat the homes of the
local people; the sweet smell of a turf fire on a winter’s night was as
pleasing as any apple pie in the oven. But gradually the bog got cut
away, and then went into disuse, left lying fallow, soggy and over-
grown. During my childhood, however, the government launched
what it called a “reclamation project” of the bog. Gradually it was
cleared of underbrush and drained. When reclaimed, it proved to be
ix
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x THOMAS GROOME
amazingly fertile soil for vegetables and fruits; it flourishes to this day.
That was my first encounter with the word reclaiming; we use it in the
title of this collection with echoes of what it meant for that Irish bog.
To reclaim is neither naïve nor nostalgic toward the past; it cer-
tainly does not mean to regress or to simply repeat what was. Instead,
the task is to claim again as our own the potential that the past still
holds for our present and future, to reappropriate and then build
upon its wisdom for our time. We’re convinced that by bringing ap-
preciation, reservation, and imagination to its defining perspectives,
personalities, and practices, we can reclaim great spiritual wisdom
from those glory days of American Catholicism to enrich the faith-life
of people today.

In what scripture scholars identify as a summary statement in the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “Every scribe who has been instructed
in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings
forth from the storeroom [some translations have “the treasure”]
both the new and the old” (Mt 13:52). In other words, those who
are wise for the reign of God should ever return to the traditions of
the community to reclaim old truths that can become as new for an-
other time. That Christian faith should have such enduring vitality is
also echoed in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the
well. There he promised to her and to Christians ever after that his
Gospel would be like fresh waters, “welling up to eternal life” (Jn
4:14). Nothing is more deadly than stagnant waters; nothing is more
life-giving than fresh waters. The intent of our project here is to tap
into the fresh waters that spring from the Catholicism of our imme-
diate fore-parents in faith.
Most Catholics who grew up prior to Vatican II experienced that
great council as what good Pope John XXIII promised it would be, a
monumental project of aggiornamento—updating and renewing—of
the Church, or as John quipped informally, “an opening of the win-
dow to let in fresh air.” Later, Pope John Paul II rightly hailed Vati-
can II as “a providential event,” one “of utmost importance in the
two-thousand-year history of the church,” and “the beginning of a
new era.” At the time and since then, Vatican II has proved to be an
unstoppable outpouring of the Holy Spirit to renew and reform the
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PREFACE xi
Church. Its whole project might be summarized as reclaiming a radi-

cal theology of baptism from the early Christian communities, radical
in that baptism is the root (Latin, radix) of who Christians are and
should be as disciples of Jesus.
In sum, Vatican II took seriously our baptismal bonding with
Jesus Christ as “priest, prophet, and ruler.” Thus, it renewed our call-
ing to “full, conscious, and active participation” in the Church’s worship1
—to be a priestly people; to side with those “who are poor or in any
way afflicted”2—to be a prophetic people; and “made one body with
Christ by baptism . . . [as] sharers in the mission of the whole Christian
people”3—to be a co-responsible community.
On the ground, this was experienced as a transformed and partic-
ipatory liturgy, emphasizing both word and sacrament and celebrated
in the local language; as heightened emphasis on the church’s social
teachings, making clear the mandate of our faith to work for God’s
reign of love and holiness, to do God’s will of justice and peace “on
earth as it is done in heaven”; as deepened awareness of the commu-
nal nature of the Church, to be a “body of Christ” that works to-
gether to continue Jesus’ ministries and saving mission to the world.
Add in ecumenical outreach to other Christians and interfaith dia-
logue with other religions, the renewal of religious life, the emer-
gence of parish and diocesan councils (a first seed of democracy), re-
trieving the call of every Christian (not just vowed religious) to
holiness of life, and so on and on. For the younger generations who
didn’t live through it, all this and more is now taken for granted; but
for those of us of prior vintage, Vatican II was an earthquake with
now forty years of aftershocks.
Most of the council’s reforms were, in fact, a ressourcement or we
might say a reclamation of convictions and practices from the early
Christian communities. Yet the typical Catholic of the time did not
recognize its deep continuity with the treasury of Christian tradition.
Instead many experienced it as a great discontinuity with that to which
they’d grown accustomed; it was as if the rug had been pulled out
from under them.
A New Moment of Opportunity for Reclamation

Of course, it would be hard to imagine any real reform and re-
newal without some feelings of discontinuity. But just imagine, almost
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xii THOMAS GROOME
overnight, we went from the priest beginning Mass with his back to
the people, behind an altar railing, turned toward—typically—an im-
posing granite altar, and whispering in Latin with a gaggle of altar
boys at his feet, to his facing outward across a table with a cheery,
“Good morning everyone” and a warm invitation to worship to-
gether as a community of priestly people. Or imagine again, the
Catholic Church went into the council still referring to Protestants as
“heretics” and came out of it calling them “our brothers and sisters
in Christ.” Such changes (some prefer the euphemistic “develop-
ments”) were bound to feel traumatic. Many Catholics, once rock-
solid confident that they knew their faith and its practices, suddenly
lost their sure footing.
With hindsight, too, many of the changes were poorly catechized
and were often overstated to the point that people heard only a call
to abandon old ways. For example, when the Church decided to sus-
pend the law of Friday abstinence—other than during Lent—people
should have been encouraged to continue this practice as a good as-
cetical discipline (actually, the 1966 papal document announcing the
change urged as much). Yet, it was most often presented as “It’s no
longer a sin to eat meat on Fridays,” and the long tradition of Friday
abstinence—dating back to the early centuries—was simply aban-
doned. We could have reclaimed such a practice and, while not plac-
ing it under “pain of sin,” continued to do it voluntarily; what a good
opportunity to feel solidarity with the poor who rarely have meat, to
contribute what we save to a good cause, to remember the Lord’s
crucifixion on Good Friday. With regard to this, and to other such
good practices, our book suggests that it may not be too late to re-
claim them.
There is also a widespread phenomenon now of adolescent and
young adult Catholics returning to the perspectives and practices of
pre–Vatican II Catholicism. Some even feel that they were cheated out
of something very valuable by their baby-boomer parents who set
aside too many of the old Catholic ways. The danger here, however, is
of regression rather than reclamation, of going back to repeat rather
than building upon the enduring wisdom of that era. For example, in
the aftermath of Vatican II, the Catholic Church rightly re-centered
our focus on Jesus, on sacred scripture, and on the liturgy. Among
other things, these reforms reduced the sometimes excessive attention
to Mary in Catholic piety. Now, however, with the reforms well in
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PREFACE xiii
place, we have a new moment of opportunity to reclaim an authentic

Marian devotion for our time that rather than undoing the good work
of the council will advance it (e.g., with all Mariology rooted in Chris-
tology, scripture, and fostering discipleship to Jesus). So, there is much
riding on how we proceed with reclamation.
In this volume we have asked our distinguished authors to engage
in a threefold hermeneutic (interpretation and presentation) of their
topics, one that is appreciative, critical, and constructive regarding
some perspective, practice, or personality of pre–Vatican II Catholi-
cism. These essays are appreciative in that they raise up the underlying
values and wisdom of Catholicism from immediately prior to Vatican
II; they are critical as needed in that they recognize the shortcom-
ings—now clearer from hindsight. The defining intent, however, is to
move beyond both appreciation and critique to creative appropriation
of the spiritual wisdom from those days to ours. The combination of
all three—appreciation, reservation, and imagination—is what makes
for Reclaiming Catholicism.
Take, for example, the Rosary, so long a cherished prayer of
Catholics but recently fallen off in popular practice. It is surely worth
reclaiming; its mantra-like rhythm and contemplative spirit could still
be a gentling prayer practice in our busy world. And even if the
“nightly family Rosary” would be a challenge for most, it could be re-
cited in other contexts, such as on a car ride—alone or as a family; it
might temper road rage or distract a while from “Are we there yet?”
By way of reservation, however, note that the traditional three sets of
five decades focused exclusively on the Christ of faith; the mysteries
went from “The finding of the child Jesus in the temple” (fifth Joyful
mystery) to “The agony in the garden” (first Sorrowful one), skipping
entirely the public life of Jesus. Here Pope John Paul II has led the
way in creative retrieval. He affirmed the Rosary as “a treasure to be
rediscovered,” recognized its limitations, and then added the “myster-
ies of light”—five great moments from the public ministry of Jesus.
This is the kind of appreciative, critical, and creative reclaiming that
you will find in this book.
Our contributors include some of the finest theologians and pas-
toral leaders of our time; our authors read like a “who’s who” list of
Catholic scholars. And we’ve invited them to write from personal mem-
ory as well—all satisfy the required age. So here you will find the best
of “narrative theology” set to the purpose of reclaiming the spiritual
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xiv THOMAS GROOME
wisdom from the defining perspectives, personalities, and practices of

pre–Vatican II American Catholicism. Read on and personally experi-
ence why Jesus urged us to constantly return to the “storeroom” of our
faith to find treasures old and new.
Boston College
March 17, 2009
Feast of St. Patrick
Notes
1. Constitution on the Liturgy #14, in Documents of Vatican II, ed. Wal-

ter Abbott (New York: America Press, 1966), 144.
2. Constitution on Church in Modern World #1, in Abbott, Documents,
199–200.
3. Ibid., # 31, in Abbott, Documents, 57.
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Introduction
A Generation X Catholic: “Back in the Day” Is Not My Day
MICHAEL J. DALEY
As one proof for the substance of their faith tradition, Catholics

have long gloried in their famous converts—those persons who have
left another religious tradition, or none at all, to become Catholic.
Names like the English churchman John Henry Newman, the English
writer G. K. Chesterton, the German intellectual and eventual Ausch-
witz martyr Edith Stein, and the Catholic Worker movement co-
founder Dorothy Day all come to mind. An impressive, though recent
list, indeed. Surely, if these persons have found a home in the Catholic
Church, there must be something of value here.
To this list I’d like to add perhaps the most famous Catholic con-
vert of the twenty-first century—Homer Simpson. Yes, that’s right, I
mean the beer-guzzling, overweight, vulgar, and incompetent resi-
dent of Springfield. I can see the beginnings of your dismissive, head-
shaking smile right now. But before you skip this introduction and
move on to supposed more substantial fare, I ask only that you allow
me to explain my rationale.
Generation X: The Times Changed

I write as a Catholic born in 1968. Unlike the other contributors
to this book, with respect to Vatican II, I am decidedly “post.” Clear-
ing the fog from my own early religious upbringing for a moment, I
have vague memories of attending Mass while singing the folk stan-
dard, “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” I still can
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xvi MICHAEL J. DALEY
picture a poster on the door of my parish church encouraging people

to receive the Eucharist in their hands. Embarrassingly, to this day, the
only thing I recall from my First Communion is wearing my brother’s
disco-inspired, second-hand leisure suit. I also remember planning an
end-of-the-year CCD prayer service during which one girl asked the
volunteer teacher if we could play Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to
Heaven.” He politely said he’d consider it. Suffice it to say that this
was a far cry from the Catholic ghetto where my mom grew up out-
side Detroit, Michigan in the fifties and early sixties.1
Politically, the two primary U.S. presidents of my youth were
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, despite all that he’s
done, I connect Carter with the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981); and
when I think of Reagan I can hear him saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall” (1987). Through it all the Cold War and the threat of
nuclear annihilation loomed over us. The pope during all of these
years was John Paul II.
Culturally, at least for a brief period of time, my brothers and I had
the coolest house on the block due to the Atari Ping Pong video game
we got for Christmas one year. For better or worse, I was there in
1981 when MTV first reached the airwaves. Not only did “Video Kill
the Radio Star,” but eventually television as we knew it changed.
All of these reminiscences place me in a group where I don’t ordi-
narily place myself, but in which I am still a member in good standing—
Generation X.
Though every generation or age defies stereotypes, let me offer
several that position mine in contrast to the baby boomer and “Great-
est Generation” which preceded it. To the consternation of their eld-
ers, Generation X’ers look upon institutions, church or otherwise, with
a certain degree of suspicion. Rather than accept authority, we question
it. Given the breakdown of so many things once held sacred, especially
the Church and family, Generation X privileges personal experience.
Subjective truth trumps objective realities. Ambiguity, diversity, plural-
ism, choice aren’t bewildering; they’re just the way things are. Technol-
ogy, rather than something to be avoided, became the lifeblood of con-
nection for many of us born during the years of the early sixties to the
early eighties. One other thing to note—and this can’t be overstated—
is that Generation X takes popular culture seriously. We were birthed
into it. What may have been difficult for the preceding generations to
buy into, we were hooked on from the beginning. The music, the
clothes, the artists, the television programs, the movies, all hold great
meaning and substance for us, or so we told our parents.
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INTRODUCTION xvii
Catholicism and the Simpsons
Speaking of popular culture, a television show that defines this

generation, and even has carried over into Generation Y, is “The
Simpsons.” First appearing as brief segments on FOX’s The Tracy Ull-
man Show, the Simpsons landed their own time slot in 1990 and have
been going strong ever since, becoming America’s longest running sit-
com. Miss Sunday Mass . . . maybe a venial (if we still even use that
word) sin. Miss the Sunday night airing of the Simpsons, even if you
were forbidden by your parents to watch it, a mortal sin for sure!
As the show’s audience has matured and changed over the years,
I would contend that the appeal of certain characters has also changed.
In the beginning, the “Eat my shorts” refrain of Bart—a rebel with-
out a cause if there ever was one—resonated with countless adoles-
cents unsure of themselves. In subsequent years, however, Homer has
emerged as an “everyman” of sorts, voicing the cares and concerns of
countless viewers. Though it might not be believed as possible, one of
the areas that the Simpsons has treated humorously, seriously, and re-
spectfully, over the years is religion.
You name the religious or spiritual topic—image of God, prayer,
countless moral dilemmas, heaven and hell, the Bible, religion and sci-
ence, Evangelical Christians (Ned Flanders), Judaism (Krusty the
Clown); Hinduism (Apu), Buddhism (Richard Gere)—there’s a Simp-
son’s episode that deals with it.2
Of all the Simpsons episodes I’ve watched, none has been more
meaningful and substantive and funnier than “The Father, the Son,
and the Holy Guest Star,” which first aired on May 15, 2005. It is so
good that if I were to ever be given the position of DRE (and this next
statement could very well disqualify me from ever getting that job), I
would make this program mandatory viewing for those in the RCIA
and, of course, those of us who are cradle Catholics. For me it bridges
what it meant, what it means, and what it should mean to be Catholic.
In essence the episode captures what Reclaiming Catholicism is all
about: appreciating what has preceded us in faith, critically assessing
the shortcomings of the Catholic traditions we should let go of, but
also highlighting the practices we should retain—and realizing that
this must be done in a constructive and creative way that serves to en-
hance our Catholic faith and identity.
The episode begins innocently enough with the announcement of a
medieval festival at Springfield Elementary. I don’t know if the writers
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xviii MICHAEL J. DALEY
meant to connect one of the programs dealing with Catholicism with a

reference to the Middle Ages, but I don’t think it was happenstance. To
the chagrin of many, Blessed Pope John XXIII’s words about the
Church have yet to be realized: “We are not on earth to guard a mu-
seum, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life.”
Bring on the Characters

For the festival, Lisa, Bart’s sister, is appointed queen; Martin, the
schoolboy genius, is named king; while Bart, contrary to his expecta-
tions, is assigned the role of the village cooper rather than that of a
chivalrous knight in shining armor. Principal Skinner arbitrarily de-
cides that Groundskeeper Willie is to be the village idiot. Sibling ri-
valry gets the best of Bart who promises that he’ll get even with Lisa
for this grade-school humiliation. Before he can take any action, how-
ever, Willie—who rightfully hates his role—has already plotted and
achieved his revenge on Springfield Elementary by releasing hundreds
of rats when an oversized pie was cut into pieces. Some dessert! Sus-
picion immediately falls upon Bart and, without any due process, he is
expelled.
Thankfully, there is a school that will take the troublemaker (who
happens in this case to be innocent), and that is St. Jerome’s Catholic
School. Striking the fear of God into his son, Homer points out that
“There you don’t just get bad grades. You go straight to hell!” Per-
haps it is a fault of mine, but as a teacher at a Catholic high school,
I’m more apt to love a person to heaven than scare them out of hell.
Fear and “Catholic guilt” do have their advantages of course—just
usually not with the students of today.
On his first day at St. Jerome’s, Bart’s negative attitude and Nin-
tendo playing ways immediately get him sent out into the hall where
he is made to stand with his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross.
The person who metes out this punishment is a stereotypic woman re-
ligious, Sister Thomasina.3 Not only is she angry, she is glad that rulers
have given way to yardsticks. This gives her more reach to rap the
knuckles of her students. Sadly, this caricature has lasted for far too
long, perpetuated both by those outside and inside the Church.
I laughed, though, at the scene in which Bart reenters her class.
Sister Thomasina is leading the class in a math lesson from the book,
The Word Problems of Our Lord. She prefaces her lesson with the ex-
ample: “Billy and Joseph start their penance at the same time. If each
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INTRODUCTION xix
swear word brings a thousand years in hell . . .” Looks like the Simp-
sons re-introduced indulgences before Pope Benedict XVI did.
Having known several women religious in college and graduate
school, all I can say is that they defy their popular “Nunzilla” presen-
tations. Nuns are principals and professors, doctors and nurses, social
activists and psychologists, spiritual directors and missionaries. The
hospitals and schools they founded and staffed have educated count-
less generations of Catholics. Thankfully, this book bears witness
through the stories of Srs. Madaleva Wolf and Mary Luke Tobin of the
lasting contribution made by women religious to the Catholic Church
and American society.
“Catholics Rock”
While out in the hall, Bart meets FBI (Foreign Born Irish) Father
Sean (voiced by Irish actor Liam Neeson). After pleading his case, Bart
is handed a copy of the Lives of the Saints Comics by Father Sean, who
tells him that lots of church types were once “rotten wee buggers.”
After that, Bart’s first day is a whirlwind introduction to the Catholic
tradition. Later, at dinner with his family, Bart excitedly talks about his
experience at Mass (Father Sean quoted Eminem!) and how he won
the class art contest by drawing the bloodiest portrayal of St. Joan of
Arc’s burning at the stake. Much to the alarm of Marge, his mother,
Bart finishes by exclaiming, “Catholics rock!”
Though we don’t always communicate our Catholic tradition well
and in the most positive light, the renowned priest and sociologist,
Andrew Greeley has repeated this refrain time and time again: The ap-
peal of the Catholic tradition is found in its stories. He says that “If we
get you in the early years of your life and we fill your head with all of
the Catholic stories, then it’s very hard for you to stop being Catholic.
Catholics are Catholics because they like being Catholic. They like the
stories—Christmas, Easter, May Crowning, the souls in purgatory, the
saints, the angels, the mother of Jesus. These are enormously power-
ful religious images.”4 Bart experienced it first hand and loved it.
The challenge for my generation, though, is how these Catholic
practices and devotions can be reclaimed and practiced in ways that
honor the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, especially with re-
gard to such key issues as an openness to the world; the reformability
of the Church; renewed attention to scripture; the practice of collegial-
ity at all levels of the Church; an appreciation of diversity within the
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xx MICHAEL J. DALEY
Church (unity, yes; uniformity, no); the active role of the laity; reaffir-
mation of religious freedom; desire for better ecumenical relations with
non-Catholics and dialogue with other faiths; and working for a more
just world.5 Rather than striving to make traditional Catholic devotions
ends in themselves (and using the practice of them to identify a person
as a “good” or “bad” Catholic), we need to approach these traditions
with a view to determining whether and how they unite us with Jesus
and the larger believing community of which we are a part.
When Bart says he’ll say a Rosary for his mother and begins grace
with “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” Marge has had
enough. She sends Homer over to St. Jerome’s to pull Bart out of the
school. Walking up the steps, Homer attests to the longstanding be-
lief in Catholic education by saying: “I’m sick of you teaching my son
your time-tested values.” Before he can add anything else, though, he
is stopped in his tracks. It’s the smell of pancakes. Hearing about the
monthly Pancake Dinner, he declares it a miracle that breakfast has
been transformed into dinner. Like his son Bart, Homer is hooked.
And—to top everything—after dinner he joins in some Bingo games.
In the course of the evening, he’s introduced to one of the more
positive portrayals of the Sacrament of Reconciliation I’ve seen on net-
work television (although on this show it is termed the Sacrament of
Penance and takes place in a confessional, aka “the box”). Homer be-
gins with a magical “get out of jail” understanding of the sacrament
only to arrive at the end with a far more mature realization of what it
means. When told by Father Sean that he can’t absolve Homer’s sins
unless he’s Catholic, Homer hesitates, then asks, “How do I join?” To
this Father Sean replies, “It begins by looking inside yourself and ends
with bread and wine.” Who can refuse such an invitation?
Homer is being let into one of the great secrets of Catholicism,
one we don’t celebrate or practice enough—our sense of community.
There in the parish hall, much like the parish cafeteria I was in this
evening for a Lenten fish fry, Homer sees a motley group of persons
united by food and faith—very eucharistic, very sacramental (the ordi-
nary communicating the sacred), in the best sense of the term. What
is drawing Homer to the Catholic faith is its earthiness (In this episode
Marge has a dream that becomes a nightmare. At the conversion of
her husband and son, she looks on from Protestant heaven over at
Catholic heaven, where Jesus has “gone native,” partying alongside
Bart, Homer, and motley crews of Italian and Irish Catholics.), its ho-
liness, its lived stories. The political and theological polarization that
CXReclaimingPt.1 11/6/09 11:57 AM Page xxi
INTRODUCTION xxi
besets the Church today—one is either liberal or conservative, pro-

gressive or traditional—is absent at St. Jerome’s. It’s just Catholics sit-
ting down at tables enjoying a good meal and fellowship together. And
to think we assumed there was nothing to learn from the Simpsons.
Past to Present to Future

One of the things that drew me to this project is a real desire to
understand and appreciate the Church’s lived experience prior to the
Second Vatican Council. Granted, I have a firm commitment to the
reforms of the council, but I also recognize that I need to appreciate
what came before me in the faith. Ressourcement (a return to the
sources) and aggiornamento (updating or renewal), two words that
characterize the substance of Vatican II, aren’t opposed to one another
but complementary. In order to go forward we must be mindful of the
past. Likewise, if the past is to have any relevance, its spiritual wisdom
must be integrated into the lived experience of believers. Catholicism,
then, is never “either/or” but always “both/and.” When balanced
well, then, Catholicism is a living tradition.
I think you’ll be shocked to know that one of the words used in the
Simpsons episode is transubstantiation. When was the last time you
heard that on television, EWTN programming excluded? In his cate-
chism class Homer is asked what the word is which describes the bread
and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ. Homer doesn’t
question this teaching of the Catholic Church on the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist but proclaims it to his catechism class. It must
be admitted, however, that he had the answer written on his forearm.
If only he had had a copy of the Baltimore Catechism!
Here I admit the need for greater religious literacy—knowledge of
the basic doctrines, practices, and stories of our religious tradition—
among my generation of Catholics. Part of the frustration within
Catholicism today is our inability to use a shared language (not that all
of that language before was good). If we don’t have a shared vocabu-
lary of faith, inevitably conversations are frustrated, and evangelizing
opportunities are thwarted. One of the purposes of this project is to
foster a shared sense of the Catholic tradition and a desire to know
more about it.
Given my use of the Simpsons throughout this article, as opposed
to quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it’s clear that
the invitation to a more substantial knowledge, understanding, and
CXReclaimingPt.1 11/6/09 11:57 AM Page xxii
xxii MICHAEL J. DALEY
appreciation of the faith is going to take different forms depending on

the group you’re trying to reach. I’m sure that with his love of beer,
Homer is a regular at the Theology on Tap series in his home diocese
of Springfield. Which leads me to point out that one thing the
Catholic tradition has over all the other religious traditions (except for
maybe Judaism) is our ability to laugh at and with ourselves. It’s time
again to use it to our advantage. It’s time to “reclaim Catholicism.”
The next time I’m at Mass, during the sign of peace I’m going to
look around the church and see if I find Homer Simpson there. As I
extend my hand to him and wish him peace, I’m also going to thank
him for converting to Catholicism. D’oh!
In addition to Homer, I must also thank several other persons. First,

co-editor Tom Groome brought invaluable perspective and experience
to the project. If there is a model of what it means to “reclaim Catholi-
cism” it is he. Second, the contributors are in a class unto themselves.
Their generosity of time and talent is much appreciated. The success
of the book is largely due to their reflections. Third, Robert Ellsberg,
our editor at Orbis Books, must be thanked for his acceptance of and
support for the project. Finally, for providing me the time, space, and
encouragement needed to complete this project, I offer thanks to my
family—June, Cara, Brendan, and Nora.
Notes
1. An excellent article on the musings of another post–Vatican II

Catholic is John J. Markey’s, “The Making of a Post–Vatican II Theologian,”
America (July 16, 1994).
2. See The Gospel According to the Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the
World’s Most Animated Family, by Mark I. Pinsky (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2001, revised 2007).
3. I remember well from my days of growing up as a kid a song released
in 1977 entitled, “They don’t make nun names like that no more” by Tommy
Sharp and the Sharptones.
4. Quote taken from an interview with Andrew Greeley on the weekly
television news program, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, May 10, 2002,
Episode #536.
5. Avery Dulles has summarized these teachings nicely in the booklet
Vatican II and the Extraordinary Synod: An Overview (Collegeville: The
Liturgical Press, 1986).
CXReclaimingPt.1 11/6/09 11:57 AM Page 1
I
PERSPECTIVES
Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward

A Pervasive Faith
JAMES D. DAVIDSON
It was 1941 in Gtreat Barrington, Massachusetts. Mary Louise Fitz-

patrick, a 100 percent Irish Catholic, was engaged to James Daglish
Davidson, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (his father was a Scottish
Presbyterian and his mother an English Anglican). Because Louise and
Jim were of different faiths, they could not be married at the main altar
in Louise’s home parish (their wedding took place in the rectory), and
they had to sign an agreement that their children would be raised
Catholic.
Jim and Louise had two sons. I was born in 1942, as Dad was
going off to World War II. My brother was born in 1946, when Dad
returned from the war. Our mother’s side of the family far outnum-
bered our father’s side, so our Irish Catholic relatives had more to do
with the way we were raised than did our Scottish and English Protes-
tant relatives. Thus, our last name is Scottish, but culturally we are
more Irish Catholic.
The Catholicism I Grew Up In

My Irish Catholic relatives were working-class people. None of
them had ever gone to college, but they all expected their kids (my gen-
eration) to go. The men were the breadwinners, working in blue-collar
3
4 JAMES D. DAVIDSON
jobs or trying to start their own businesses. The women were what are
now called “stay-at-home moms.” The families’ very modest incomes
were spent on basics, like buying homes and saving for the kids’ educa-
tion. There weren’t many vacations.
Religious prejudice and discrimination (anti-Catholicism) had cre-
ated social and cultural barriers between the nation’s religious elites
and Catholic immigrants in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Although
these barriers persisted into the 1950s, cracks were appearing in the
walls that divided Protestants and Catholics. My Aunt Margaret could
not get a job teaching in the public schools in the 1940s because she
was Catholic, yet by the 1950s many of the teachers were Catholic.
The Church made no bones about its cultural distinctiveness. In a
society that stressed democracy, the Church defended its hierarchical
structure. Whereas the Protestant majority emphasized the authority
of the Bible, the Church focused on papal infallibility and “tradition.”
While Protestant churches conducted their worship services in Eng-
lish, the Catholic Mass was conducted in Latin. Despite criticism from
other faiths, the Church insisted that Mary was the Mother of God.
The Church also separated itself socially from the larger society.
With good reason, it saw American society as hostile to its values and
interests. Viewing itself as “the one true Church,” it encouraged its
members to participate in Catholic groups and discouraged them
from joining non-Catholic organizations. The result was that
Catholics’ social circles included a very high percentage of other
Catholics. Even when Catholics had non-Catholic friends—as I did in
my public high school—we often participated in different social
groups. My friends Milt—a Congregationalist—and Corky—a Jew—
could belong to DeMolay (an international youth organization), but
I could not, because of its ties to Freemasonry.
The Church served the social as well as the spiritual needs of its
people. Ethnic parishes and celebrations (such as St. Patrick’s Day pa-
rades) offered them ways of perpetuating their ethnic identities as they
adapted to American society. Dioceses and religious orders provided a
vast network of Catholic schools, which were like steps on an up-esca-
lator into the middle class. Schools were also were places where
Catholics found careers and spouses, and contexts in which the faith
was transmitted across generations (the Catholic colleges my brother
and I attended provided most of these benefits). The Church also of-
fered Catholics age-related sacraments (such as First Communion,
Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward 5
Confirmation, Marriage, and Last Rites) at every stage in people’s per-

sonal and family lives.
As a result, the Church was important to my whole family. It in-
fluenced everything my Catholic relatives did. It affected the décor in
their homes (a crucifix hung on the wall in almost every room, pic-
tures of Mary and/or Jesus were on the tops of the dressers in all the
bedrooms). The Church shaped the family calendar (Are any of the
kids serving morning Mass this week? Remember, Thursday is a holy
day, so we’ve got to go to Mass). It established a rhythm (getting on
your knees to say your prayers morning and night) for each day. It af-
fected people’s eating habits (no meat on Fridays, no food or drink of
any kind between midnight Saturday and Communion on Sunday
morning). It dominated Catholics’ conversations (discussions of the
pastor’s idiosyncrasies were a favorite past-time). It also made others
aware of one’s religious affiliation (only Catholics put ashes on their
foreheads and gave up cigarettes and chocolate for Lent).
My Catholic relatives believed there was a close relationship be-
tween their faith and the Church. The faith included the core Christ-
ian tenets such as belief in a personal God, the incarnation, and the res-
urrection, along with specifically Catholic beliefs having to do with
Christ’s real presence in the sacraments (especially the Eucharist),
Mary, and concern for the poor. The Church was the religious institu-
tion that stretched from the Vatican to the diocese to the local parish
and around the world. It was where the sacraments, devotional prac-
tices such as Benediction and novenas took place, and where the kids
went for CCD. Like most other Catholics in the 1950s, my elders
thought the faith and the Church were inseparable. The faith was
lodged in the Church, and the Catholic Church was the fullest expres-
sion of the Christian faith.
There was an abundance of priests and a distinct culture of cleri-
calism. Clergy and laity alike believed that priests were set apart by or-
dination and holier than lay people. They also believed that priests had
more authority and played a more active role in the formulation and
implementation of church teachings. Ordinary Catholics were to learn
church teachings, incorporate them into their lives, and pass them on
to their children. This top-down model of church life, with its empha-
sis on the teaching authority of the magisterium and the laity’s obliga-
tion to obey, produced extraordinarily high levels of doctrinal and be-
havioral consensus. The lines for confession on Saturday were long.
6 JAMES D. DAVIDSON
Almost everyone went to Mass every Sunday. I don’t remember adults

openly disagreeing with church teachings.
Moving Forward (or What to Bring with Us)

Things sure have changed! Catholics who are my age or younger
are now firmly entrenched in the upper-middle class and are consid-
ered part of the nation’s cultural mainstream. We no longer see the
Church as a refuge. The Church has a more positive view of modern
society, and—with the exception of a few noteworthy flashpoints (e.g.,
abortion, capital punishment)—church leaders urge Catholics to adapt
to the prevailing culture. The Church no longer affects Catholics’
daily lives, conversations, and social networks the way it used to. Reli-
gious obligation has given way to a tendency for Catholics to view be-
lief and practice as matters of choice. Obedience has receded into the
background, as more and more parents teach their kids to think for
themselves. Participation in the sacraments has declined, and disagree-
ments over doctrine have increased. Fewer men are going into the
priesthood, and lay people expect to be actively involved in parish and
diocesan decisions.
Today’s Catholics have little or no interest in returning to the so-
cial circumstances of the 1950s. They prefer being educated, white
collar, prosperous, and integrated into the larger society. And, given
these conditions, they believe that they are good and talented people
who ought to have a say in all aspects of church life, including the se-
lection of their pastors and decisions about parish finances. For the
most part, they want to implement Vatican II’s vision for the Church
and its place in the world.
Older Catholics have been quite willing to let go of some things
that were taken for granted in the 1950s but which we now know were
wrong-headed or excessive, such as the Church’s antipathy toward
other religious traditions and its tendency to treat women and minori-
ties as second-class citizens. They also have shown their willingness to
embrace many new ideas, such as conducting the Mass in the vernac-
ular and having the priest face the people at Mass. But many older
Catholics also worry that, in our rush to modernize the Church, we
may have thrown out some elements of our heritage that should be
cornerstones of our future. They wonder if some traditional concepts
and practices could be updated and contribute to the renewal that
Pope John XXIII longed for when he convened Vatican II in 1962.
Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward 7
Younger Catholics—who have had no personal experience with

1950s Catholicism—have found it even easier to accept new ideas and
to reject the most parochial, exclusionary, and unjust parts of tradi-
tional Catholic culture. But many young people also have heard inspir-
ing stories about the 1950s or have seen admirable traits among older
Catholics who were products of that era. They wonder if some of the
traditions they have heard about should be reemphasized or revised in
some way; if the things that fostered the religious pride and loyalty
they see in their parents and grandparents could be reintroduced in
some form; whether some of the ways in which the Church was use-
ful to old immigrants might also be of help to new ones; and if there
is something that could be done to bridge the gap between faith
(being spiritual) and Church (being religious).
This book is for Catholics of all ages who have such questions and
yearnings. It challenges liberal Catholics to find ways in which the best
elements of 1950s Catholic culture can become the best elements of
modern Catholic culture. It challenges conservative Catholics to adapt
traditional ways to current conditions. It challenges all Catholics to
imagine how reclaiming our past can be an important step in moving
forward.
Becoming a Theologian
Ressourcement, Personal and Ecclesial
FRANCINE CARDMAN
Crossing the Bridge
My strongest early memories of Catholicism are of my Italian

grandmother’s hands. At any small, quiet moment—sitting in the
kitchen, walking to the grocery store, riding the subway, standing on
the back steps and enjoying the sunshine—her hand would reach for
the rosary beads strategically positioned in the pocket of her apron,
her “housecoat,” her robe, even, much later in life, her mink coat. Her
hands kneaded and baked bread, too, bread that nourished my child-
hood; bread that followed me to college in care packages, the first of
which included a bread knife and cutting board that I still have; bread
that one day I came to recognize as eucharistic.
Less clear are memories of my Polish grandmother’s more am-
biguous relationship to the Church: her steadfast church-going, the
Infant of Prague statue and his several sets of vestments, my puzzle-
ment about why she didn’t go to Communion, the missing piece of
information eventually supplied: she was divorced and remarried. My
instinctive sense as a small child that something was amiss became a
conviction that her exclusion from the Eucharist was unfair. I knew she
was Catholic; why didn’t the Church?
8
Becoming a Theologian 9
Growing up on suburban Long Island in the 1950s, I didn’t know

that my generation of Catholics would walk across the bridge our par-
ents were building from the immigrant church of their parents and
grandparents to the middle-class, American Catholicism that would
help elect John F. Kennedy president in 1960. Perhaps also represen-
tative of my baby-boomer Catholic cohort, I attended public schools,
a decision in which my mother prevailed by virtue of the contrast be-
tween the local elementary school’s average class size of eighteen and
the thirty-plus at St. Boniface parish school. As public school students
we were released early each Wednesday afternoon to attend catechism
class. I was acutely aware that we were second-class Catholics, not re-
ally as Catholic as the parochial school kids we had to sit behind on
occasions when we all attended Mass together—even for First Com-
munion and Confirmation. I didn’t think that was fair, either.
I progressed through Baltimore Catechisms 1 and 2, cheerfully
memorizing everything: the prayers, the strange words, the questions
and answers on God, Trinity, incarnation, redemption, Church, grace,
sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Mass. But information
isn’t knowledge, much less understanding. The hapless young priest
who taught ninth grade CCD had only the seminary version of cate-
chism answers to my increasingly dissatisfied questioning. When he in-
sisted that the evolutionary theory I was learning in biology class was
at odds with the Church’s teaching on the single origin of human life
(monogenism), I began to wonder how intelligent people—my father,
for instance, or my high school Latin teacher—could be Catholic.
Then came Vatican II. I didn’t know, of course, what a watershed it
would be not only for the Church but also for me. I read about it in the
New York Times and in Time magazine, where John XXIII was on the
cover as Man of the Year in 1962. The council was an interesting but
distant event and I couldn’t imagine it would make much difference.
Becoming a Theologian
For most of my first year at college I simply didn’t go to church,
an advance beyond my late–high school practice of pretending to go
to Sunday Mass, when I would silently roll our VW down the hill, pop
the clutch to avoid making too much noise while starting the engine,
drop by the church to pick up a bulletin, and head down to the beach
to watch the wind on the water.
10 FRANCINE CARDMAN
Then things began to change. I took a course on the New Testa-

ment taught by a former priest thoroughly versed in both the histori-
cal-critical method and Vatican II. It was a revelation of its own. I met
faculty, students, and families from the town who were Catholics of
this new sort, along with ecumenically-minded Protestants eager to in-
teract with them. One Sunday, I’m not sure why, I went to the New-
man Club liturgy in the Friends Meeting House on campus. Soon
community and liturgy along with my studies were drawing me to-
ward faith and, more slowly, toward understanding. A young Catholic
math professor and an older (much older, it seemed then) professor of
French formed a group to discuss Teilhard de Chardin’s The Divine
Milieu, which opened a window on creation and the possible coher-
ence of faith and science. We read Edward Schillebeeckx’s Christ the
Sacrament of the Encounter with God, which reached back to the expe-
rience behind those abstract and unenlightening catechism answers
and invited an organic appropriation of Catholic sacramental imagina-
tion. I acquired a copy of Walter Abbott’s translation of The Docu-
ments of Vatican II that I still have, its red paperback cover flaking and
its pages disintegrating. The rest is history; mine.
What I was discovering was a way of being Catholic that was inte-
grated with the intellectual life; that valued participation, collabora-
tion, and subsidiarity; that engaged the world and culture, promoted
peace and development, understood the political dimensions of faith,
and worked for justice. As I studied the history of the early Church—
an entirely new world I knew almost nothing about—I found there
the wellspring of the new but old Church that Vatican II was calling
into being. I had to know more.
And so I went to graduate school to study historical theology and
“patristics.” I delved into the early sources and at the same time dis-
covered the Catholic scholars who had been retrieving and reappropri-
ating them in the decades before Vatican II, preparing the ground for
renewal. The word “ressourcement” was unknown to me then, but
that’s what I was doing, too, as I entered into a far more expansive tra-
dition than the Catholicism of my childhood. I admired how Henri de
Lubac rehabilitated the unfairly condemned third-century theologian
Origen by recovering his extensive biblical scholarship. Jean
Danielou’s reappropriation of the biblical typologies that structured
early Christian liturgy and his interpretation of the history of salvation
gave me a feel for the sources and dynamics of contemporary liturgi-
cal reform. I welcomed too his re-introduction of Gregory of Nyssa’s
Becoming a Theologian 11
mystical theology to Westerners suspended in the rigid medium of

scholasticism, making available again a spirituality informed by Eastern
Christianity’s more generous assessment of the human capacity to
grow freely in the love and knowledge of God.1
From Yves Congar I learned that to do theology well one had to
remember a longer tradition than post-Tridentine Catholicism and be
aware of a larger Christian community than the Roman Catholic or
Orthodox churches. Taking history seriously and carrying ressource-
ment beyond the patristic era, Congar’s painstaking work on tradition,
lay people in the church, reform, and ecumenism convinced me that
this kind of theological study was essential for finding a way through
differences within Catholicism and among Christians. Introduced with
some reluctance to Karl Rahner’s often incomprehensible theological
investigations, I began to grasp how Catholic doctrine could be artic-
ulated in a framework more in touch with Thomas than with neo-
Thomism and could find in the human and historical dimensions of
life the grace that permeates nature and opens beyond it.2
Later I would learn how costly the work of these theologians had
been to them personally. Through the 1940s and 1950s each had
come under suspicion from the Holy Office. Congar, de Lubac,
Danielou, and de Chardin were silenced, the latter until his untimely
death in 1955. As preparations for Vatican II were under way, Rahner
was on the verge of being investigated and Schillebeeckx was em-
broiled in controversy. Then John XXIII appointed all but Schille-
beeckx periti (theological experts) to assist the council’s work and
Schillebeeckx was soon giving lectures to large groups of bishops eager
to learn about the “new theology” (Nouvelle Théologie) informing the
council’s discussions and documents. The rest is history; ours.
Past as Prologue
Looking back at the council and the post-conciliar years that
formed me as a Catholic and a theologian, I can see the convergence
of personal and ecclesial ressourcement. I can see, too, the ways in
which this return to the sources for the sake of aggiornamento, bring-
ing the church up to date in order to engage “the joys and hopes, the
griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age” (Gaudium et Spes 1),
has both succeeded and faltered and is itself now in need of renewal.
When I wonder where that renewal will come from, I ponder the pa-
tient endurance of those theologians who helped the council find the
12 FRANCINE CARDMAN
words for its vision of a Church renewed in service of God’s mission

to the world. Like my grandmothers, they were faithful, even when
wounded by the Church. Like my grandmothers, prayer was the work
of their hands, whether holding rosary beads or writing theology. In
time, I hope, the strength of their witness will show us the way to the
future by calling us to continue along the path taken by the council—
through a past that makes all things new.
Notes
1. Henri De Lubac’s and Jean Danielou’s reappropriation of patristic

sources is reflected in the more biblical and patristic rhetoric of Vatican II, es-
pecially in foundational documents such as Lumen Gentium (church) and
Sacrosanctam Concilium (liturgy). Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The
Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007). De Lubac wrote several books on Teil-
hard de Chardin, e.g., Teilhard Explained, trans. Anthony Buono (New York:
Paulist Press, 1968). Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956). His selection of Gregory of
Nyssa’s writing is From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical
Writings (New York: Scribner, 1961).
2. Yves Congar and Karl Rahner helped shaped the theological outlook
of the council through a more relational understanding of revelation and an
appreciation of the human and historical dimensions of the Church and its
mission in the world. Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical
and a Theological Essay (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Lay People in the
Church: A Study for a Theology of Laity, trans. Donald Attwater, 2nd rev. ed.
(Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965); Divided Christendom: A Catholic
Study of the Problem of Reunion (London: G. Bles, 1939). Karl Rahner, Theo-
logical Investigations, 23 vols., 1961–1992 (various publishers).
Studying the Bible, Then and Now
DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A.
Way Back When
On November 18, 1965, Pope Paul VI solemnly promulgated Vat-

ican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. For many peo-
ple, this document seemed to cause a shift in previously unrecognized
tectonic plates that existed deep within the religious psyche of the
Roman Catholic spirit. These people regarded the shift as a kind of
tsunami wave that would sweep away all previous approaches to bibli-
cal study. However, that is not quite what happened. Unlike some
changes that did indeed sweep away earlier devotional practices, this
document opened the floodgates that had been holding back waters of
renewal, waters that had been building up for more than twenty years,
waters what were invigorating rather than destructive.
Biblical study was given new impetus on September 30, 1943 when
Pius XII issued Divino Afflante Spiritu. In this document, the Holy Fa-
ther encouraged the use of critical interpretive approaches for opening
up the riches of the biblical tradition. Protestants had developed and
employed these methods since the sixteenth century when Luther in-
sisted that sola scriptura, scripture alone, should be the norm of theol-
ogy. It seems that the Catholic Church had three hundred years of de-
velopment to cover if it was to catch up with other Christian
denominations. However, once again, appearances can be deceiving.
13
14 DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A.
Many Catholic theologians had already been exploring new ways

of reading the Bible. Chief among them was a French Dominican,
Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938). He eventually came to be
known as “the father of the Catholic Biblical Movement.” Though
censored by church officials during his lifetime, he achieved a delicate
balance between fidelity to church authority and intellectual integrity.
It was people like him who laid the foundation of biblical scholarship
in the Catholic Church.
Back Then
Even before Vatican II, insights gained through the use of critical
methods of interpretation had begun to appear in catechetical re-
sources. An Austrian-born Jesuit by the name of Johannes Hofinger
immediately comes to mind. His influence in biblical-based religious
education cannot be overestimated. Women religious who were re-
sponsible for the education of children in parochial schools as well as
for religious education programs flocked to his conferences and read
his books. The old Bible History stories were replaced by the fruits of
critical scholarship. The Sadlier textbook I used for seventh grade fea-
tured the Old Testament. Thus, an entire generation of religion teach-
ers and students were well prepared for the direction set by the Vati-
can document.
Women religious laid the groundwork for biblical renewal, but
they were still not accepted in graduate programs of biblical study. The
prime example of this was Kathryn Sullivan, R.S.C.J. She became a
biblical scholar despite the fact that she was denied entry into a bibli-
cal program. After earning a doctorate in history, she taught herself
Hebrew and Greek and studied scripture privately. She was the first fe-
male member of the Catholic Biblical Association. She even became its
vice president. However, as a woman she was not allowed to proceed
to its presidency. She taught scripture both here and abroad, she wrote
and translated the writings of others, and she was a founding member
of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly as well as The Bible Today.
And Now
Today biblical scholars and teachers stand on the shoulders of
those who went before us. They were the ones who explored new pos-
sibilities, who ventured into new areas, who suffered “the slings and
Studying the Bible, Then and Now 15
arrows of outrageous fortune.” We may sometimes feel that the

church moves very slowly along the path of change and renewal, but
the history of biblical interpretation since the time of the Reformation
challenges this perspective. The official approach to scripture may have
been couched in strict Catholic theological teaching, but pastoral
needs of people prompted many individuals to investigate new ways of
opening the riches of the biblical tradition. At several moments in his-
tory, biblical renewal flowers forth. Were this not so, the Catholic Bib-
lical Movement associated with Marie-Joseph Lagrange, O.P., would
not have come to life, the biblical catechetical ministry of Johannes
Hofinger, S.J., would not have taken root, and the passion for scrip-
ture of Kathryn Sullivan, R.S.C.J., would not have enkindled a similar
fire in the minds and hearts of others.
Though at one time Catholic biblical scholars were far behind
their Protestant counterparts, they now stand toe-to-toe with all bib-
lical scholars. And what of the people in the pew? Many who were
opened to new insights before the council enrolled in graduate pro-
grams and became the teachers who brought the fruits of study to the
rest of the Church. Graduate programs were now accessible to both
men and women. And all of this occurred during the lifetime of many
of us who spanned the pre– and post–Vatican II years.
Who’s Who
Many people who spanned those years have set the directions
taken by biblical study today. Some have continued to investigate cul-
tural aspects of the ancient worlds that produced the scriptures. Bruce
Malina (Creighton University) and Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J. (Brite Di-
vinity School) have opened up the meaning of various social customs
and values, thus helping us understand ancient people and why they
thought and acted as they did. Other scholars are interested in meth-
ods of interpretation. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Harvard Divinity
School) is renowned for her development of feminist critical methods
of interpretation, while Fernando Segovia (Vanderbilt University) in-
vestigates post-colonial approaches. Finally, there are those who de-
voted themselves to biblical theology and spirituality. The work of
Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P. (1923–1994) and of Sandra Schneiders,
I.H.M., come immediately to mind. And there is a legion of other
great Catholic scholars who paved the way of biblical scholarship and
renewal, people like John McKenzie, S.J., Josephine Massyngberde
16 DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A.
Ford, Raymond Brown, S.S., Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J., Pheme Perkins,

Philip King, Richard Dillon, George McRae, S.J., and many more.
All of these scholars have influenced the Church through their
teaching, lecturing, and writing. While many of these names might be
unfamiliar to the person in the pew, they are well known to those who
stand in the pulpit or behind a lectern. They were all nurtured in the
pre-Vatican church, and they all stepped forward when the Vatican
Council called for a deeper knowledge of and appreciation for the
word of God. Several of them were educated in and now teach at grad-
uate schools not associated with the Catholic Church. This in no way
suggests alienation from the Church. Instead, it is evidence of the
close association that exists between all Christian churches that value
serious study of the scriptures. We all use the same critical methods of
interpretation, and we all learn from each other.
What’s What
Current Roman Catholic biblical study appears to be taking an in-
teresting turn. It seems to be trying to recapture aspects of interpreta-
tion that were lost in previous generations. During the sixteenth cen-
tury the reformers accused the officials of the Roman Church of
reading biblical passages in ways that provided legitimacy to current
church practices. This was the reason the reformers turned to the
meaning intended by the original biblical authors, arguing that these
ancient authors were speaking to issues that concerned their own com-
munities and, therefore, their teachings could not be used to support
later church teaching. Though the Catholic Church continued to in-
terpret various biblical passages through its own theological lens, once
it adopted critical interpretive approaches, it too shifted its focus from
possible present meanings to those of the past.
This shift to the past proved to be a very good one, for it prevented
people from twisting the meaning of a passage in order to produce
whatever meaning they sought—proof texting. However, this historical
approach often cut the passage off from the believing community of the
present. The Bible certainly originated and was developed within past
communities. Nevertheless, as the word of God, it belongs to present
communities. So, while it may be important to ask: “What might this
passage from Luke’s Gospel have meant for the early Christians?” one
must also ask: “And what might it mean for us today?”
Studying the Bible, Then and Now 17
The recent Synod of Bishops, “The Word of God in the Life and
Mission of the Church,” addressed this very topic. The bishops were
concerned with ways of bringing the richness of the biblical tradition
developed over these past several decades more deeply into the lives of
the Catholic people of God. The synod applauded the advances that
have been made, and it suggested new ways of furthering the develop-
ment already achieved.
When I look back over the forty years during which I have been
involved in biblical ministry, I am amazed at all the changes I have ex-
perienced and shared. From teaching Bible stories to children to di-
recting future priests and pastoral ministers in the critical analysis of
the biblical text; from conducting summer school catechism classes to
earning a doctorate in scripture; from being handed a seventh grade
textbook that featured the Old Testament to serving as president of
the Catholic Biblical Association. Who says that the Church does not
change? Or, that it changes too slowly? True, none of this would have
happened had not there been women and men before me who fol-
lowed the promptings of their hearts and committed themselves to the
word of God.
We must be inspired by them and do as much in our own time.
Jesus
A Change in Emphasis
LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON
It is fairly common these days to hear from proponents of histor-

ical Jesus research that creedal Christianity has neglected the human-
ity of Jesus. Among post–Vatican II Catholics also, it is sometimes
claimed that the Tridentine church so emphasized the divinity of
Christ that Jesus disappeared into the Holy Trinity. Mary had to serve
as the prime mediator between humans and God, as expressed in the
common slogan, ad Jesum per Mariam (“To Jesus through Mary”). In
contrast, it is claimed, the Second Vatican Council helped recover the
human Jesus for ordinary Christians.
There is some truth to these assertions, but only some. They ex-
aggerate by making an either/or out of a situation that is better
viewed as both/and. The difference in the attention given to Jesus by
Catholics before and after the Second Vatican Council is a matter of
emphasis. Certainly, the aftermath of the council brought a helpful,
even an essential dimension to the ordinary Catholic’s appreciation of
Jesus. But present-day Catholics also have much to learn from pre-
conciliar practices of piety centered on the humanity of Jesus.
The difference in emphasis can be stated succinctly. Before the Sec-
ond Vatican Council, Catholic piety toward Jesus focused on his love
toward humans and fellowship with humans as demonstrated above all
by the circumstances of his birth and the manner of his death. After the
18
Jesus 19
council, Catholic piety toward Jesus is directed above all to the charac-
ter of his ministry, with special emphasis on his words and deeds.
The two foci of earlier piety fit with the emphasis of the Creed,
which does not say anything about Jesus’ ministry, but speaks only of
his being born of the Virgin Mary and his suffering under Pontius Pi-
late. Throughout the medieval and post-Reformation periods, Catholic
mystics devoted their meditation to the mystery of God’s presence in
an infant child—a form of humility that was consistently compared to
Christ’s presence in the humble matter of the eucharistic bread and
wine; such reflections are found in the mystics Mechtild and Hadjewich
as well as in Francis and Bonaventure. They were given physical expres-
sion (incarnation) in countless artistic expressions of the infancy
gospels, and prayer at the crèche during the Christmas season.
Even more consistent was the focus on Christ’s passion, often in
minute and excruciating detail, as in the visions of Julian of Norwich and
the poetry of Richard Rolle of Hampole. The humanity of Jesus was at
the center also of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, and of the
great work it influenced, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.
God’s Love in Human Form

The basis of such meditation, it should be noted, was the narra-
tives of the canonical gospels, which were heard by the mystics in litur-
gical proclamation—thus the natural connection to the Eucharist—
and read in private. The yield of such meditation was awe and
appreciation for the love of God demonstrated through Christ’s pro-
found and utter sharing of the human condition, a sense of gratitude
for the grace given through such love, and a commitment by the mys-
tic to follow more closely in the same path of humble poverty and obe-
dience. Such was the import of the distinctive devotion to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, which found in the symbol of the human heart the ex-
pression for God’s love displayed in human character.
The same emphasis was found in the common practices of ordinary
Catholics. The mysteries of the Rosary included, to be sure, the glori-
ous events associated with Jesus’ resurrection, exaltation, and sending
of the Holy Spirit. But the two other sets of mysteries were devoted
to the beginning and the end of the gospel story. The Joyful myster-
ies invited meditation on the humanity of Jesus in the annunciation,
visitation, birth, presentation and finding in the temple—all derived
from Luke’s infancy account.
20 LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON
The sorrowful mysteries, in turn, followed Jesus through the pas-

sion narrative. Ordinary Catholics had an unusually rich repository of
scriptural knowledge for this aspect of Jesus’ humanity, for all during
the season of Lent, the stations of the Cross—composed out of both
Old and New Testament passages —provided a slow and solemn med-
itative performance of Jesus’ last moments. During Holy Week, fur-
thermore, all four passion narratives of the gospels were proclaimed
liturgically, and the ceremonies of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday,
and Good Friday brought the mysteries of Christ’s passion to vivid re-
alistic expression.
Although the focus of piety concerning Jesus was narrow before
the Second Vatican Council, it was correspondingly deep. It was based
in the reading of scripture and given embodiment by the liturgical prac-
tices of the church. Emphasis was less on knowledge about Jesus than
on the sapiential imitation of Jesus; less on his deeds and words than on
his character; less about information than about transformation.
Vatican II’s Change of Focus

The change of focus after Vatican II came about as a result of two
factors: the extension of biblical knowledge more widely among
Catholics as a result of scholarly translation and popularization, and
the development (not coincidentally) of liberation theology. Libera-
tion theology distinguished itself from its predecessors by its steadfast
attention to the political dimensions of the Good News, as found par-
ticularly in the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke: Christian life
should be one of strenuous effort to change unjust social structures
and systems to ones more responsive to human need and more en-
hancing of human dignity. Luke’s prophetic Jesus, who came to pro-
claim good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed, is the
model to be followed. Here, the focus is less on Jesus’ human charac-
ter that is to be imitated than on his vision for God’s rule, emphasiz-
ing this world rather than the next.
Liberation theology both arose from and helped stimulate further
attention to the Jesus of the gospels and his public ministry. Catholics,
who had always felt themselves disadvantaged with respect to biblical
knowledge compared to their Protestant friends, were eager to join in
Bible study and find out all they could about the mission of the his-
torical Jesus. As a result of the many opportunities offered them and
their own enthusiasm for learning, Catholics today can be said to have
Jesus 21
far better knowledge of the full range of information about Jesus

(both biblical and extra-biblical).
Catholic biblical scholars and many Catholic lay people also find
themselves fascinated with historical Jesus research, explicitly or im-
plicitly preferring the Jesus capable of being reconstructed by means
of historical study to the Jesus portrayed in the gospels and proclaimed
in the life of the Church. Even Catholics who have little acquaintance
with liberation theology find themselves thinking about the signifi-
cance of Jesus in terms of the transformation of human politics toward
God’s reign rather than in terms of eternal salvation.
Both Jesus of History and Christ of Faith

It is all to the good, I think, that Catholics have learned about
Jesus’ earthly ministry through their engagement with the New Testa-
ment. It is a positive enhancement of their discipleship to imitate the
historical Jesus who embraced the poor and homeless, drove out evil
spirits from the oppressed, touched the untouchable, and challenged
the value system of the world. The fruits of such imitation of Jesus are
seen in the many ministries of Catholics among the poor and outcast,
not for the purpose of conversion, but simply for justice to be done.
Indeed, even John Paul II, who was not a great fan of liberation the-
ology, recognized the value of a piety focused on imitating Jesus’ min-
istry and added to the Rosary new mysteries that invite meditation on
aspects of his enactment of God’s rule through his words and deeds.
It would be unfortunate, however, if the earlier forms of Jesus
piety were displaced and forgotten, especially when they are so deeply
embedded in the Creed and in the liturgical practice of the church.
The deepest and most important level of Jesus’ humanity, after all,
does not reside in his words and deeds, but in the manner in which he
participated in our shared human existence, shared it from humble and
impoverished birth to obedient and shameful death, shared it with a
human character marked by absolute obedience to God and absolute
dedication to the needs of others. By so sharing he both showed us a
new way of being human in the world and revealed the face of God in
human form. If the older forms of piety are forgotten, then attention
to Jesus’ ministry threatens to become superficial and a form of false
hope; but if the newer emphasis builds on and expands the deep tracks
of the older piety toward the Christ of our faith, then devotion to
Jesus within the Church grows wider without losing depth.
The Church
Catholicism Before and After Vatican II
RICHARD P. MCBRIEN
Many self-described “traditional” or “orthodox” Catholics have

been urging for a long while that we should make every effort to re-
store the Catholicism of the pre–Vatican II period—a time when, in
their minds, the Church was more truly “Catholic” than it is today. As
I have frequently pointed out in my various writings and lectures, a
good number of such Catholics were not even alive in the years pre-
ceding the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). They never experi-
enced pre-conciliar Catholicism first-hand, as I did and as did count-
less other Catholics who are now over the age of sixty.
I have also pointed out, with tongue in cheek, that if these self-
styled “orthodox” Catholics really want to go back to those pre-con-
ciliar days, they will only get more priests like me! I am, after all, a
product of pre–Vatican II Catholicism. I was baptized a Catholic soon
after I was born in 1936, was taught by my mother my first prayers
and the sign of the cross as a very young child, studied the Baltimore
Catechism under the guidance of the parish nuns, served Mass as an
altar boy, attended Catholic junior high and then the local high-school
seminary on my way to studying for the priesthood. I was ordained in
February 1962, just over eight months before Pope John XXIII for-
mally convened the council.
22
The Church 23
I am, therefore, totally a product of the pre–Vatican II Church:

born, educated, trained, spiritually formed, and ordained a priest in
that Church. Perhaps for that reason, I have little patience with those
who did not personally experience pre–Vatican II Catholicism or who
“converted” to Catholicism some years after Vatican II, but who
sometimes pontificate (excuse the word) on why the Catholic Church
needs to go back to that time in order to save itself from itself.
Needless to say, there is much about the pre–Vatican II Church
and the broad Catholic tradition it embodied that was and still is pas-
torally positive and spiritually enriching for those of us who directly
experienced it and were profoundly shaped by it. Pre-conciliar
Catholicism can and should serve as the wellspring of spiritual growth
and wisdom for Catholics today.
But there were also elements of pre–Vatican II Catholicism that
had to be jettisoned or at least significantly transformed, and the coun-
cil served the Church well in doing both. In what remains of this brief
personal narrative, I will focus first on those elements of pre-conciliar
Catholicism that should not be lost, but refurbished and renewed, and
then on those aspects of pre-conciliar Catholicism that should not be
restored.
The Abiding Assets of the Pre–Vatican II Church

The Catholic Church of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s celebrated
(“administered” was the more commonly used verb) the seven sacra-
ments, and the Church of today still does. The Eucharist (more often
referred to then as both the Mass and Holy Communion) was at the
center of the Church’s sacramental life, and it remains so today. Bap-
tism made possible for (mostly) infants and (some) adults alike en-
trance into full membership in the Church, with all the attendant ben-
efits and obligations. (To be sure, there was also an emphasis in
baptismal catechesis on the “washing away” of the stains of original
sin, but an explanation of this is beyond the scope of this piece.)
First Communion, preceded unfortunately as it is still today by
first confession, marked young Catholics’ passage into the fullness of
spiritual citizenship in the Church, just as Confirmation would mark
their passage into the beginnings of spiritual maturity.
There were, then as now, other sacramental milestones in a
Catholic’s life in that pre–Vatican II period: Marriage (for most),
24 RICHARD P. MCBRIEN
Ordination (for a relative few), and Extreme Unction for the dying
(this sacrament is now called the Anointing of the Sick to make it
clear that it is also for the seriously ill, even the chronically ill who
are not yet on the threshold of death).
Acknowledgment of one’s sins and a recognition of the need for
repentance, a firm purpose of amendment, and absolution were the
basic elements of what was then popularly known as “Confession”
(now the sacrament of Reconciliation). What has changed is not the
absence of sin or the need for divine forgiveness mediated through the
Church, but the format or venue in which this spiritual transaction oc-
curs. In the pre-conciliar Church, it happened in a darkened confes-
sional box; in the post–Vatican II Church, it happens in a reconcilia-
tion room, in a face-to-face exchange with the priest-confessor.
When the sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic priesthood reached its
ugly nadir in January 2002 with the shocking investigative series of ar-
ticles in The Boston Globe, I pointed out on national television and in
various interviews with the print media that this scandal was not at all
confined to Boston, that it was national and even international in
scope. And so it was, and is.
I also described it as being the most dangerous crisis to confront
the Catholic Church in the United States in its entire history and the
universal Church since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. In
truth, the sexual-abuse scandal had placed a dagger at the throat of the
Church by putting at fundamental risk the Church’s most precious
asset: its sacramental life. That sacramental life was, and still is, the
principal reason why people enter and remain in the Catholic Church.
The Church’s sacraments provide opportunities to ritualize, cele-
brate, and work our way through life’s most joyful and most sorrow-
ful experiences: the birth of children or grandchildren, their first taste
of the Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion, their first stir-
rings of spiritual maturity in Confirmation, their falling in love and
committing themselves to another person in a life-long union, their
experience of guilt and their felt need for forgiveness, their encounter
with serious illness, whether of a loved one or of themselves, and fi-
nally the loss of a loved one in death.
These are among the abiding riches of Catholicism, both before
and after Vatican II, and they need to be creatively retrieved, pre-
served, and enriched. Like the wheat of the gospels, they continue to
grow among us, but also with the weeds, in danger always of being up-
rooted with those weeds and thrown into the fire (Mt 13:24–30).
The Church 25
The “Weeds” of Pre–Vatican II Catholicism
Recent attempts to reignite interest in indulgences, auricular con-

fession, and the Latin Mass have been motivated, whether overtly or
not, by some deeply felt need to restore one of the most characteristic
features of pre-conciliar Catholicism, namely, unchallenged and un-
challengeable clerical authority.
Some priests in the late 1960s and early 1970s had voiced com-
plaints about the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council, be-
cause they had too-hastily concluded that there was no longer any sig-
nificant place for them in the life of the Church. The council had
welcomed the laity into ministries formerly reserved exclusively to the
clergy, even allowing lay persons into the sanctuary, not only to read
portions of the scriptures assigned for the day’s Mass but even to dis-
tribute Holy Communion.
After the council most members of the congregation received Com-
munion, not only in the hand but also, and more significantly, without
first going to confession—an obligation that many pre-conciliar
Catholics had assumed they had even if not in the state of mortal sin.
Indulgences, which are the remission of punishment still due to
sins that have already been forgiven, are a spiritual benefit that only the
pope or a diocesan bishop can grant. It should be noted, however, that
one of the conditions for the reception of a plenary indulgence, or the
full remission of punishment in purgatory, is that the prospective recip-
ient go to confession—a sacrament that only a priest can administer.
And the Latin Mass as well is something that only the priest can
perform, without lay involvement. He alone knows what Latin words
to recite and how to conduct the required rituals, and he alone has the
power to do both.
A letter-writer to The New York Times in early 2009, writing in re-
sponse to the brief controversy over indulgences, may have put her fin-
ger on the nub of the issue: “The salutary benefit [of these changes]
may be to buttress waning clerical authority. . .”
Vatican II’s Renewal of the Church

In the end, what the Second Vatican Council did was to sustain
and enhance the abiding spiritual assets of Catholicism, especially its
sacraments, while planting the seeds of transformation and new life. In
the process the council challenged many conventional assumptions

about the nature and mission of the Church: that the Church is
equivalent to the hierarchy, that the laity have no active role to play
in the Church, that the pope alone is in charge of the universal
Church, that the mission of the Church is limited to the preaching
of the word and the priestly administration of the sacraments, that
only Catholics are in the Body of Christ, that all Catholics are
“Roman” Catholics, and that any form of worship with non-Catholic
Christians is always forbidden.
More than three years before the opening of Vatican II, in Octo-
ber 1962, Pope John XXIII began referring to the coming council as
“a new Pentecost,” that is, a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon
the Church. More than a decade later, Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens, pri-
mate of Belgium and one of the council’s leading figures, tried to keep
alive John XXIII’s dream in his own book, A New Pentecost? The
book’s epilogue began with the words: “The Spirit remains at the heart
of the Church, directing us toward the future. We should like to have
a glimpse of that future, so as to read better the signs of the time. But
that is not essential: our hope for the future is not based on statistics
and charts. It derives entirely from faith in the Spirit, who is with the
Church as it moves into the future.”
The first Pentecost has sometimes been referred to as the “birthday
of the Church.” In reigniting the fires of the original Pentecost, the
Second Vatican Council also brought about a genuine rebirth of the
Church in our own time.
All of us to continue to draw from that new life and from the wis-
dom which it so abundantly yields.
The Mass
Heaven on Earth
JOHN F. BALDOVIN, S.J.
The Mass (now more commonly called the Eucharist) is at the

center of Catholic faith and practice. It is the celebration of what God
has done for us in Jesus Christ. We experience Christ in the Mass in a
number of ways, but especially through the proclamation of the word
of God and through his presence in the transformed bread and wine.
In these essentials there is no difference at all between the pre–Vatican
II and the post–Vatican II Mass.
On the other hand, the experience of the Mass was indeed very
different prior to the council. In this essay I will attempt to provide a
portrait of many of the distinctive features of the pre–Vatican II Mass,
especially as I experienced it as a young man in the 1950s and early
1960s.
The Mass Code

The Mass was enshrined in an elaborate code but one that you
could decipher. The first clue was color. As you entered a church you
could always see the tabernacle on a pedestal right in the middle of the
altar. The tabernacle containing the reserved sacrament was covered
by a veil that corresponded to the feast or season. Like vestments on
the statue of the Infant of Prague (at least in my parish church) the veil
27
28 JOHN F. BALDOVIN, S.J.
would be changed with some frequency. If the Mass were being cele-
brated for someone who had died, then the veil (and the vestments
that the priest wore) would be black. This was often the case with
weekday Masses. There were even several different white veils depend-
ing on the degree of solemnity. In other words, you didn’t need to be
an expert to be able to figure out what or whom in particular was
being celebrated on a given day.
On weekdays the celebration of the Mass followed an elaborate
code that depended on the Church’s liturgical calendar and on the fre-
quent Requiems (or Masses for the Dead). The name “Requiem”
came from the first word of the Latin entrance chant, or Introit, of the
Mass. In the Middle Ages individual liturgies got their names from this
entrance chant, so that when someone referred to “Quasimodo” Sun-
day, for example, you knew they were speaking of the Sunday in the
Octave of Easter. Requiems often bumped minor saint’s days in the
parish calendar. Depending on the monetary offering that had been
made by the donors, these Masses followed a pattern one also experi-
enced in Sunday Mass. They were Low Masses, High Masses, or
Solemn High Masses. Low Masses were rather perfunctory affairs with
no singing at all. At the altar the priest was assisted by two servers,
usually young boys. These Masses would last around twenty-five min-
utes. A High Mass included chants such as the Preface of the Eucharis-
tic Prayer sung by the priest as well as chants, for example the Gloria,
sung by the congregation. Most elaborate were the Solemn High
Masses in which three priests took the roles of priest celebrant, dea-
con, and subdeacon. These Masses were surrounded by an elaborate
choreography and usually a larger number of altar servers. High
Masses and Solemn Masses also used incense at several points—at the
entrance, at the proclamation of the gospel, and at the offertory.
Another feature of the Mass that was more characteristic of the
pre-Vatican II liturgy than of the present one was the use of bells at
the “Holy, Holy, Holy” and during the institution narrative. A server
would ring a bell as the priest ended the preface and again after he pro-
nounced the words of consecration over the bread and over the wine
while the priest genuflected, raised the host or chalice, and genuflected
again. I first understood the function of these bells when I saw men in
an Italian mountain town put out their cigarettes on the church steps
and come inside the church to “see the consecration” after the Sanc-
tus bell had been rung.
The Mass 29
There were other features that gave context and texture to the cel-
ebration of Mass. Up until the mid 1950s Catholics fasted from mid-
night if they were to receive Holy Communion. (That eucharistic fast
was gradually reduced to three hours and then to one.) One of the
consequences was that evening Masses were unheard of. With the ex-
ception of Holy Thursday, the Easter Vigil, and Midnight Mass for
Christmas, Mass was something that happened in the morning. An-
other aspect that gave texture to the Mass was its surrounding atmos-
phere of silence. Much of what the priest did at the altar, like the
Canon (or Eucharistic Prayer), was done silently. In the course of the
1950s and early 1960s, the dialogue Mass was introduced in the
United States. Despite the fact that the Mass was couched in silence,
the congregation now responded to the Latin invitations of the priest.
Congregations learned simple Gregorian chants, like the Gloria of the
Mass of the Angels, to participate in the Latin chants that would once
have been the preserve of the choir. The entirety of the Mass was in
Latin of course, but on Sundays the two readings (Epistle and Gospel)
were read in English before the priest preached his sermon.
Together but Unequal

Everyone knew that the Mass consisted of two (unequal) parts.
The first part was called the Mass of the Catechumens (equivalent to
our Liturgy of the Word). The name came from the fact that in the an-
cient Church, unbaptized catechumens were allowed to remain at
Mass until the beginning of the Creed or the Prayers of the Faithful.
(The Prayers of the Faithful had actually fallen into disuse from around
the end of the fifth century and were restored after Vatican II.) On
Sundays one did not commit a mortal sin if she or he arrived at Mass
before the end of the Mass of the Catechumens. From this one can
surmise that the Liturgy of the Word was not deemed as important or
essential as the next part. As with every part, the Mass of the Catechu-
mens was accompanied by an elaborate choreography. The priest
moved from the foot of the altar at the beginning of the Mass and then
to the center. If a long version of the hymn, Gloria in excesis Deo, were
sung, he would sit on a sedilia (bench) after he had recited it while the
choir sang it. He would return to the center of the altar for the Col-
lect (or Opening Prayer) and then move to his right to read the Epis-
tle. This was the name of the first reading as it normally came from
30 JOHN F. BALDOVIN, S.J.
one of the Pauline or other letters in the New Testament. After the
epistle reading a server moved the altar missal to the left (or north)
side of the altar from which the Gospel was read. The popular under-
standing was that the Gospel early on was proclaimed to the unevan-
gelized North.
The Mass of the Faithful started with the Offertory, a series of rit-
ual preparations, prayers and gestures by the priest, and ended with
the final blessing, which oddly enough came after the dismissal “Ite
missa est” (Go, the Mass is ended) that gave the Mass its most popu-
lar name. The Mass of the Faithful, i.e., the part reserved to the bap-
tized, consisted of the Offertory, the Canon of the Mass), preparatory
rites for Communion (like the Our Father), Holy Communion and
the Post-Communion rites.
The relation between the Mass and the reception of Holy Com-
munion was a rather curious one. Most of the time people received
Holy Communion in the form of hosts that had been reserved in the
tabernacle. (Reception of the Precious Blood was a practice restored
by Vatican II after about a thousand years.) Everyone received Com-
munion kneeling and the host was placed by the priest on the commu-
nicant’s tongue. This was accompanied by a rushed formula whispered
in Latin. Communicants normally knelt at a communion rail, which
separated the sanctuary from the nave of the church. The rail was nor-
mally covered by a cloth at communion time and an altar server held
a plate (or paten) under the chin of the communicant to prevent the
spilling of fragments of the host. I have suggested the the relation be-
tween Communion and the Mass was curious because the reception of
Holy Communion did not necessarily occur at the time of Commu-
nion at the Mass. Often enough, especially on weekdays when time
was of the essence, a priest who was not celebrating the Mass would
come out the sacristy after the consecration, go to an auxiliary taber-
nacle, and begin to distribute Holy Communion while the celebrating
priest was continuing with the Mass.
The Mass ended with the dismissal but other prayers had been
added. Before he left the altar the priest recited the Last Gospel (the
Prologue to St. John’s Gospel). At the foot of the altar he recited the
“Hail, Holy Queen” and several other prayers—all added by Pope Leo
XIII in the late nineteenth century for the conversion of Russia from
Orthodoxy.
The ritual of the Mass that I have just described remained fairly
stable from the high Middle Ages until Vatican II. Its longevity as a
The Mass 31
ritual alone tells us that it had much to recommend it. In the first
place, as the church historian John Bossy has remarked, people knew
that the most important thing that could possibly happen in the
world—the presence of the God Man among us and his activity in sav-
ing the world—was actualized every time the Mass was said. They may
not have been able to articulate all of the theological or doctrinal as-
pects of this reality, but the solemnity of the Mass itself, its obscure
language, haunting chant, atmosphere of silence and reverence all
pointed to this reality.
At the same time, of course, Vatican II and the subsequent litur-
gical reform, backed by a great deal of historical scholarship since the
Renaissance, sought to reform the liturgy and restore a number of fea-
tures that had been lost in the course of the centuries: the use of an
intelligible language, the varied ministries that characterized the an-
cient liturgy, the priest praying aloud, a much richer fare of readings
from holy scripture, a weekday lectionary, more readings from the Old
Testament, the Prayers of the Faithful, the connection between the
Mass and receiving Holy Communion, the reception of Communion
under both kinds. The post-conciliar reform also introduced some fea-
tures that were new, like the variety of eucharistic prayers that we enjoy
today and the ability to choose suitable liturgical music as a substitute
for the chants printed in the Roman Missal.
I suggested at the outset that the Mass we celebrate today does
not differ in essentials from the Eucharist as it has been celebrated
throughout the centuries. Clearly we have experienced great gains in
the pasty forty-plus years of liturgical reform and just as clearly there
are aspects of the older Mass, such as its solemnity and reverential si-
lence, that we can benefit from retrieving today.
The Humbling of the Priesthood
DONALD COZZENS
Men of Awesome Power
The smell of beeswax candles and freshly starched surplices lin-

gered in the servers’ sacristy as four sleep-deprived boys assigned to
the 6:30 morning Mass took scarce comfort from the morning cold.
Moments later, vested in black cassocks and white surplices, we went
studiously about our duties. Cruets of wine and water and a starched
finger towel were placed on the credence table and the altar candles
were lighted. As instructed, we checked in the floor length mirror to
see that our surplices were on straight. We were ready. Then, with the
solemnity of the Swiss Guard, we led the priest to the foot of the altar
and the sacred, mystical ritual unfolded. Introibo ad altari Dei . . .
More than half a century later, I can say that serving Mass shaped my
Catholic imagination, gave me a sense of the sacred, and set me on the
path that led to ordination.
When the late Bishop Kenneth Untener was asked why he became
a priest, he liked to reply: “It wasn’t my idea.” Well, I have an idea why
I’m a priest today. Not a clear idea, of course. I still shake my head in
wonder at the mystery of the grace, destiny, and freedom that seem to
be the essential ingredients for what Catholics call a “vocation.” It was
my idea to become a priest—and it wasn’t my idea to become a priest.
But beeswax, starch, and an amorphous sense of the sacred had their
place in my pre-adolescent longing to be a priest one day.
32
The Humbling of the Priesthood 33
Looking back to my altar-boy days, the priests I knew weren’t par-

ticularly gifted men. There was a certain aura about them, however—
a quality hard to name. A handful were clearly bright and talented.
One became a bishop, another, a seminary rector. To my young and
inexperienced eyes, they were each men of mystery who daily touched
the hem of the divine. They offered Mass, forgave sins, baptized, mar-
ried, and buried. No senator, judge, or physician quite captured the
imagination of Catholics then as did the parish priest. When my par-
ents spoke of Doc Scullen, the pastor of Holy Name parish during the
Depression and World War II years, it was with a note of affection. It
was more than the respect commonly shown to clergy—it seemed to
me they revered this man. They said Doc Scullen knew every parish-
ioner by name and that he somehow found a way to get help for fam-
ilies in trouble. My parents’ pastor and the parish priests of my youth
stirred something inside me. I wanted to be one of them.
Most pre-Vatican II Catholics in the steel-town of Cleveland be-
longed to the working class and it seemed to many that priests con-
stituted a kind of spiritual nobility. And the bishop, a personage who
visited each year for Confirmation, seemed to be royalty—a kind of
prince. He merited, after all, the un-American title “Excellency” and
was treated with unparalleled deference. Didn’t a Catholic fortunate
enough to meet a bishop drop to one knee and kiss his ring? And
wasn’t a family, honored with a visit from the parish priest, always on
its best behavior? What we now decry as clericalism, the nadir of cler-
ical culture, was yet to be named. The status of bishops and priests,
their private and often secret world of privilege and exemption, ap-
peared to offend few Catholic sensibilities. To the contrary; it seemed
the clergy’s due.
But it was the priest, not the bishop, who anchored and directed
the life of a parish. And for pre–Vatican II Catholics, the parish was the
church. It was the parish, not the diocesan headquarters we know as
the chancery or Catholic Center, that provided a sense of belonging.
Especially for Catholics living in cities, the parish gave people the so-
cial security, if you will, of a village, where geography and common
worship forged identity and community. And in this ecclesial village,
the pastor was the unquestioned leader and, therefore, a man of con-
siderable power. Priests who clothed their power and status in pastoral
kindness won the loyalty—and often the love—of their parishioners.
Still, the priest remained a man of power, and to the eyes of believing
Catholics, a truly awesome power.
34 DONALD COZZENS
The religious world of pre-conciliar Catholics rested on three cor-

nerstones: adherence to the doctrines of the Church, a prayer life fos-
tered by the sacraments and parish devotions, and a moral life in har-
mony with the commandments of God and the laws of the Church. In
other words, the practicing Catholic’s inner life was sustained by doc-
trine, devotion, and morality. In shorthand—believe, behave, and be
saved. For most, behaving was the hard part, especially when it came
to sex. From this perspective, a Catholic’s interior life was reduced to
the condition of his or her soul—one was in the state of grace or in the
state of mortal sin. Die in the state of grace, and you were saved; die
in the state of mortal sin, and you were lost. The great, singular prize
was salvation—to merit eternal life with God and the communion of
saints in heaven. For the believer whose understanding of religion was,
to a great extent, moral living, the priest was the human broker of sal-
vation. He alone possessed the power to absolve from sin.
The power of absolution was trumped only by the priest’s power
to celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass—to change bread and wine into
the body and blood of Christ. Not only could the priest make one
right with God through absolution, the priest made it possible to do
more than touch the hem of the divine—he made it possible to re-
ceive Holy Communion, to be mysteriously, unspeakably close to
God. “My God, what a life! And it is yours, oh priest of Jesus Christ”
(Henri Lacordaire).
The Humbling of the Priesthood

Post-Vatican II priests are leaning into cold, humbling winds that
their pre–Vatican II brothers were mostly spared. Consider the follow-
ing realities and issues: an aging, dwindling priest corps, a drastic drop
in the number of seminarians, the questioning of mandatory celibacy
for diocesan priests, conflicting theologies over who is suited for the
priesthood by gender and sexual orientation, and parents dissuading
their sons from even thinking about life as a priest. Nothing, however,
has buffeted and humbled the priesthood as the shocking, staggering
sexual betrayal of children and adolescents by a significant number of
clergy and the corresponding cover-up of the abuse by many bishops.
The fallout from the clergy abuse scandals for priests and bishops—
and for the church in general—is difficult to exaggerate. Moreover,
unless church leaders are committed to identifying and correcting the
systemic and institutional factors at play in the abuse scandals, for ex-
The Humbling of the Priesthood 35
ample, the secrecy and divisiveness of clericalism, the priesthood will

continue to flounder.
From a spiritual perspective, a humbled priesthood is a good
thing. One of the great contributions of the council was its emphasis
on the Church as the pilgrim people of God and on the fact that all
the baptized, in terms of spiritual dignity, were equal members of the
Church. Only in a metaphorical sense, then, is the priest a man set
apart. He is ordained to be the pastoral leader of the parish commu-
nity, but not the only leader. His ministry as preacher, sacramental
minister, and servant-leader remains essential to the health and vi-
brancy of the Church. But the priest is not the only one anointed by
the Spirit with gifts and talents for the good of the Church. Finding
his place along side the deacon, the lay ecclesial minister, the vowed
religious, and the many untitled ministers in his parish will be an on-
going challenge for the priest of the post-conciliar Church.
There are, of course, other challenges facing the post-conciliar
priest. Engaging with and relating to educated, thinking, believing
Catholic women is a daunting challenge for large numbers of priests.
Many don’t quite know what to do with the articulate, well-read
women of their parish even as they admit that a Church that does not
hear the word of God preached in the voice of women remains skewed
and handicapped. At the same time, priests sense that the power dif-
ferential between laity and clergy has changed. Catholics have come to
imagine God differently in the post–Vatican II church. They no longer
seem to be afraid of God’s wrath—at least in the sense of spending an
eternity in hell for missing Mass on Sunday. Pastors have known for
some time now what recent surveys have made clear: more than two-
thirds of Catholics don’t celebrate Sunday Mass every week. For the
majority of the faithful who fall into this category, there is little need
for a pastor in the sense that Doc Scullen was pastor to the people of
my home parish. Rather, they tend to see their parish priest more as a
chaplain—someone on the margins of their lives, someone they can
call upon for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. It’s not this way, of
course, in many of our healthy, vibrant parishes, but the mindset
holds, I’m convinced, for large numbers of Catholics.
Holding On to the Sacred

It began for me with beeswax candles and starched surplices, with
stained glass windows, with sisters who smelled of Ivory soap and
36 DONALD COZZENS
unruffled priests who appeared to be genuinely happy men. Grow-

ing up as an altar boy in the village I knew as Holy Name parish gave
me a priceless gift—a sense of the sacred. And without a fundamen-
tal sense of the sacred, a sense of the hidden presence of God,
Catholicism loses its savor. That’s why the sacraments—especially
the Eucharist—are central to the life of Catholic faith. But the pres-
ence of the Spirit, the unbidden touch of the sacred, can’t be re-
stricted to the sacramental life of the Church. At least from time to
time, Catholics discover the presence of God in their homes, their
workplaces, in shopping malls, in sprawling cities, in the silence of
the woods, in the beauty of nature. They experience the sacred in
our great cathedrals and churches and in hospices and soup kitchens.
The college students I teach speak of finding a sense of the sacred on
their service trips to Honduras and Guatemala and in their weekly
trips into the city to feed the homeless. Still, I suspect a sense of the
sacred, a sense of God’s presence, remains more elusive in technol-
ogy-driven, financially obssessed first-world countries like our own.
Having, by God’s grace, a sense of the Holy, priests should by
their very presence foster a sense of the sacred, a sense of mystery. Per-
haps as much by the integrity of their lives as by their preaching and
ministry, priests should prompt people to wonder at the hidden pres-
ence of the divine. The best priests I knew as a boy did this. The best
priests I know today do this. The ones who mask their humanity be-
hind the persona of the priest, the ones who never seem to be quite
real, never foster a sense of the sacred.
The cold, humbling winds continue to blow and today’s priests
lean steadfastly into them. In these days without sun, no one thinks
priests can walk on water, but the One who did stands with them. That
should be enough.
Catholics among Southern Neighbors

in the 1950s
JEFFREY GROS, F.S.C.
It was an exciting time to grow up Catholic in the United States

during the 1940s and 1950s, especially in the South. Memphis, Ten-
nessee, is often called the Buckle of the Bible Belt because the major-
ity of black and white Christians are evangelicals, Baptists, and Pente-
costals. Catholics were among the earliest settlers on these Chickasaw
Bluffs; the Spaniards came to Fortaleza San Fernando of 1767. Yet,
after the religious revivals of the nineteenth century and the popula-
tion decimation in the 1870s from the yellow fever epidemic—and be-
fore recent Hispanic immigration—Protestants came to make up
nearly 90 percent of the population in the region.
In these recollections, I focus on three themes: (1) living as a
member of the Catholic minority in the South in the 1950s and
1960s, (2) living with non-Catholic neighbors, and (3) the stirrings of
renewal and change in the post–World War II Church.
Southern Catholics
Catholic identity was never a great problem for those of us who
lived in this minority situation. There were two Catholic families on
my block. Our neighbors across the way produced a son, a few years
my senior, who went on to become a professor of English in southern
37
38 JEFFREY GROS, F.S.C.
California. We knew well the anti-Catholicism of entrenched nativism.

For that reason, Catholics bonded together even across ethnic lines.
All of our schools had Protestant and Jewish students from Catholic
kindergarten through Catholic college. Otherwise it would have been
impossible to provide the Catholic education that was so important for
us in interpreting our faith to those around us who were ignorant or
prejudiced. Even to this day, religion is not a taboo subject in the
South. In fact, especially in the African American community, religious
language and imagery are prominent aspects of communication in
everyday speech.
We also realized that we were resented by some sectors, and knew
very well the difference between Christian denominations: Episcopal,
Presbyterian, Disciples, Methodists, and others, all of who held onto
their prejudices. During the 1960 John F. Kennedy election one only
had to look at the marquee of every white Baptist church to realize for
whom “God” was calling the flock to vote, though neither candidate
nor church affiliation were mentioned by name. My father, a staunch
Republican, finally voted Democrat, largely out of revulsion for the
bigotry of the campaign as it played out in Memphis.
In the tight-knit Catholic community, we transcended ethnic lines
to pull together as one community. The public tensions between Irish,
Italian, Lebanese, German, and Polish, so characteristic of Catholicism
in locales where the Church dominated demographically, were muted
in response to a Protestant majority. Of course, my parents had nega-
tive attitudes about Italians as they did about Greeks, Jews, and blacks,
but these were muted in church circles, and—for the most part—in
business. The Greek, Jew, and Italian were among the best insurance
agents in the firm over which my father presided, since they “worked”
their own ethnic groups well. Segregation meant that black agents
would have been unknown in a white firm.
My father had New Orleans roots, so his Catholicism was more
Mediterranean than Irish. He was very active with the schools and
parish, but had a healthy objectivity about clergy. We knew the Fran-
ciscans were good for confession, the Dominicans good for the intel-
lectual heritage. He went away to the Jesuits for retreat, and would
have worked to build a retreat house in our diocese had the bishop of
the time not been so anti-religious, with a special aversion for Jesuits.
Dad would scheme with the pastor, who was a master of the an-
nulment for failed marriages, to subvert the bishop’s regulations con-
trolling what the parish could build or how its money could be spent.
Catholics among Southern Neighbors in the 1950s 39
On the other hand, he had no illusions about Monsignor Merlin Kear-

ney’s openness to lay leadership. The two required consultors were
brought in on New Year’s Eve to sign the annual mandated financial
reports, which were never given to them to read. And Kearney brought
them in at different times, with names covered. Yet, they would often
end up in the club for a drink later in the day, assessing the parish in
their own way. The pastor often got more support than he deserved
and more expertise than his style was open to. Commitments to the
Church were substantive, but bishops and priests were not taken
naively as the experts they often put themselves forward as being.
Living with Our Neighbors

From first grade to graduate school, I attended only Catholic in-
stitutions. However, I was never in a classroom without Protestant
and often Jewish fellow students through high school, until I entered
a religious formation program with the Christian Brothers. Our grade
school and high school always had non-Catholic teachers, though the
bishop protested in the 1950s when Christian Brothers High School
in Memphis hired a Protestant to teach sociology. It was a private
school of which the bishop had not been overly supportive in any
event. So, as with his protest in 1962 when the Brothers integrated
the school, the bishop’s observations were respectfully taken into ac-
count, and filed appropriately. The Christian Brothers’ High School
(and, after 1953, College—now University) was known as a “temple
of tolerance” since the 1930s. It had a separate “ethics” program for
non-Catholic students who preferred to opt out of religion classes,
though many, especially the Episcopalian and Methodist students,
chose to take these courses.
We grew up knowing Protestants who were more devout Chris-
tians than many of our Catholic friends. Many non-Catholic teachers
knew and appreciated the Christian tradition better than some of our
Catholic professors and even some religious. We were well aware of the
difference between the Eucharist-centered piety of our Episcopal
friends and the fundamentalism and occasional bigotry of our Baptist
playmates. We felt more affinity with our Methodist friends who invited
us to Sunday evening church where they often showed movies, than
with our Evangelical neighbors who tried to convert us to their way of
being Christian. Because we had to interpret our religion on the play-
ground, we were grateful for the resources of our catechism classes.
40 JEFFREY GROS, F.S.C.
As I noted before, my father had his ethnic and racial prejudices,

but his insurance agency included two types of Presbyterian, one lib-
eral and one Evangelical; two types of Episcopalians, one for the doc-
tors and the other for the business executives; an Orthodox Jew; a
Greek Orthodox; and Italian and Irish Catholics. For all his negative
attitudes about the Italians and Greeks, my father tolerated their styles
to tap into their communities.
My first Orthodox Divine Liturgy was at the wedding of Nick Ca-
padalis, where, as an amazed ten-year-old, I admired the glorious
iconography and the ceremonial crowning of the couple. In my fam-
ily there was great respect for Ike Loscov because he was the most suc-
cessful of the agents in the office. He would read The Night Before
Christmas for us each year and “do” Santa Claus after our retiring. He
and Dad would lobby together at national conventions for each
other’s dietary requirements: kosher food and fish on Friday, for ex-
ample. At Dad’s funeral, Ike stood outside the cathedral with his head
covered, while his wife Berta sat in the last pew being less Orthodox-
observant.
When the Second Vatican Council came along and affirmed reli-
gious freedom, it was a great relief. Paul Blanshard’s Protestants and
Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was
well known in Memphis, and at another level of society the Ku Klux
Klan was active. When the council proclaimed that ecumenism and in-
terreligious dialogue were to Catholic identity, decades of pluralistic
living were vindicated for us.
While we had no theology to support it, we knew that there was
a real if imperfect communion among fellow Christians whose faith
was deep, with dedication rooted in a common gospel and commit-
ment to a common Christian intellectual tradition. In practice, we
often felt more affinity for religious Jews than for the Evangelical
Protestant majority which often had the same prejudices toward both
of our communities.
My parents had been active in the National Conference of Chris-
tians and Jews, even though the bishop wrote letters forbidding priests
to go to the banquets that honored a Catholic each year, with Jewish
and Protestant counterparts. Routinely Monsignor Kearney would re-
ceive episcopal reprimands when a picture of him with a rabbi, Protes-
tant minister, or Orthodox priest would appear in the newspaper.
Monsignor Kearney taught us by his example that it was easier to be
forgiven than to be refused permission by asking.
Catholics among Southern Neighbors in the 1950s 41
Exciting Horizons Opening
For a Catholic studying the 1950s, it was an exciting time. In col-

lege we were enriched by the superb literary revival represented by the
Catholic English authors: Chesterton, Belloc, Dawson, Greene, and
Waugh; and the French: Bernanos, Claudel, Péguy, Mauriac, and Bloy.
The philosophy of Jaques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, the historical
consciousness brought to the tradition by The Development of Doctrine
of John Henry Newman, the historical study of liturgy, and the early
inklings of Bernard Lonergan’s work, all helped us to see and appreci-
ate our Catholic faith, the handing on of the catechetical heritage of
our order, and the interdisciplinary character of Catholic learning in a
whole new light.
As a biologist I was excited by Teilhard de Chardin. I embraced
the new, post-Sputnik biology that emerged in the early 1960s and
was appearing in new high school texts. Likewise, the liturgical and
biblical renewal of catechetics, with which the De LaSalle Brothers
were involved through St. Mary’s Press before the council, was excit-
ing. When the new work of the council finally emerged in the
mid1960s in theology and catechetics, we were primed to receive and
transmit it, as we had been with the new biology before it.
Yes, we who grew up in the years before Vatican II have much for
which to be grateful. Now we trust in the Spirit’s continued action in
the Church, nurtured for centuries, coming to new fruition in the
council, and leading us now into new horizons.
Our Ancestors Would Be Incredulous

Vatican II and the Religious Other
MARY C. BOYS, S.N.J.M.
In September 2005 I participated in a conference at the Gregorian

University in Rome commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Nostra
Aetate, one of Vatican II’s most significant documents. This international
gathering included Buddhist scholars from Sri Lanka, Japan, and Turkey;
Hindu scholars from India and the United States; and Muslim scholars
from Lebanon, Scotland, Egypt; and Malaysia. Jewish and Christian
scholars from Europe, Israel, and North America completed the roster of
participants. Before the Second Vatican Council—the first council to
refer positively to other religions—such an assembly would have been
unimaginable.1 Our respective ancestors would be incredulous.
Certainly, few Catholics before Vatican II could have envisioned
the breadth and depth of interreligious exchange over the past forty
years as symbolized by that conference. In the past, polemic and dis-
paragement generally characterized the Church’s attitude toward the
religious other. The classic formulation was “outside the Catholic
Church there is no salvation” (Extra ecclesiam nulla salus). This for-
mulation, dating back to Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) and Fulgentius
of Ruspe (468–533), was promulgated for the whole Church by the
Council of Florence (1438–1442):
The Holy Roman church firmly believes, professes and

preaches that “no one remaining outside the Catholic Church,
42
Our Ancestors Would Be Incredulous 43
not only pagans,” but also “Jews, heretics or schismatics, can

become partakers of eternal life; but they will go to the ‘eter-
nal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matt 25:41),
unless before the end of their life they are received into
it . . . For union with the body of the Church is of so great im-
portance that the sacraments of the church are helpful to sal-
vation only for those remaining in it; and fasts, almsgiving,
other works of piety, and the exercises of a militant Christian
life bear eternal rewards for them alone.”2
Theologians sought to ameliorate the harshness of this decree by

speaking of the salvific power of “implicit faith,” which many of us
educated in the pre–Vatican II church understood in terms such as
“baptism of desire,” “baptism of blood,” and “invincible ignorance.”
These terms enabled Catholics to recognize that circumstances often
prevented persons from being baptized in the Church. Nonetheless,
many Catholics believed that “non-Catholics” would go to hell (or,
in the case of unbaptized infants, to limbo). Yet in the pre-conciliar
days, relatively few North American Catholics interacted with Bud-
dhists, Muslims, or Hindus. What we did hear on a consistent basis,
particularly in liturgical settings, was a denigration of Judaism.3 This
was especially evident in the prayers of Good Friday.
The Perfidious Jews

The Good Friday services of my childhood were austere: the
altar and sanctuary devoid of adornment, the statues covered, the
organ silent, and the presider clothed in black vestments. After the
reading of the Gospel and the sermon, a series of prayers was
solemnly recited according to ancient tradition in which the church
prayed for all people on the day in which Jesus died for all. The
prayers (in Latin, of course, so we followed in our missals) were dra-
matically intoned. “Let us pray,” the presider said at the beginning
of each intercession, then invited the congregation to kneel in silent
prayer. After this contemplative moment, we were invited to stand.
The prayer (for the church, for the pope, for government officials,
for Jews and pagans) followed. For the Jews, however, the drama of
the kneeling and rising was dispensed with because they had insulted
Christ by bending their knees in mocking him.4 Before 1955 the
prayer was worded as follows:
44 MARY C. BOYS, S.N.J.M.
Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that Almighty God
may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may
acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.
Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy
mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we
offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the
light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from
their darkness. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who lives
and reigns with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for
ever and ever. Amen.
Some modifications were made to this prayer. In 1955 Pope Pius

XII restored the kneeling/standing rubric to make the prayer for the
Jews consistent with the other prayers. In 1962 Pope John XXIII re-
moved the Latin perfidies, translated above as “perfidious” and then as
“faithlessness.”
The Jews, “First to Hear the Word of God”

Even the removal of “perfidious,” did not ameliorate the negative
depiction of Jews as blind and living in darkness. Such a representation
did not accord with Vatican II, particularly section four of Nostra Ae-
tate, which refers to Jews as a people whom God holds “most dear.”
Accordingly, a new prayer for Jews was composed. Since 1970 we have
been praying in a strikingly different manner and tone:
Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of
God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name
and in faithfulness to his covenant.
Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to
Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that
the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of
redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
According to longstanding church tradition, liturgy shapes theol-

ogy.5 Thus a revised prayer is significant in conveying the Church’s re-
alization that its posture toward the religious other—in this case,
Jews—has changed. So, too, have attitudes toward other religious tra-
Our Ancestors Would Be Incredulous 45
ditions; accordingly, the 1970 Good Friday prayers no longer refer to

heretics, schismatics, and pagans, but to those who do not believe in
Christ or in God. The modifications are reflected not only in a series
of documents refining and expanding Nostra Aetate, but also in struc-
tural innovations: the establishment of the Pontifical Council for In-
terreligious Dialogue in 1964 and the Commission on Religious Re-
lations with Jews in 1974.6 Interreligious dialogue has become a
serious endeavor, with a substantial literature and widespread involve-
ment. Increasingly, it is being recognized as crucial if the diverse peo-
ples of our world are to live in peace with one another.
Yet Vatican II’s changed posture has not been accepted by all. One
has only to survey the websites and blogs of various traditionalist
Catholics to read their ferocious criticism. For example, in 1983 Arch-
bishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of one of the most prominent
groups, the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, wrote an open letter to the
pope that condemned his “support of collegiality, the revolutionary
‘human rights,’ the protestant mass and the free diffusion of heresies
within the Church.” The website continues: “The Pope seemed to
sponsor this attitude with his scandalous visits to a Protestant temple and
the Synagogue in Rome, his idolatrous acts in Togo and India, crown-
ing the job with the ecumenical meeting of all religions at Assisi.”7
While such traditionalist reactions to Vatican II represent only a
small percentage of Catholics, the reality is that the council is still
being interpreted.8 Moreover, the complexity of interreligious dia-
logue means that disagreements are inevitable.9 Yet, despite the ten-
sions and difficulties, what Vatican II initiated by its recognition of the
“ray of truth” in the religious other has shone new light on the mys-
tery of faith. One had only to look at the faces of the participants at
that 2005 conference in Rome to know that the Spirit of God was
hovering in our midst.
Notes
1. This refers primarily to Nostra Aetate, 2: “The Catholic Church rejects

nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere rev-
erence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which,
though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth,
nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” Simi-
lar expressions of this positive attitude toward other religious traditions may
46 MARY C. BOYS, S.N.J.M.
be found in Lumen Gentium,16–17, Ad Gentes, 3, 7–9, 11; and Gaudium et

Spes, 22.
2. This text may be found in The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Docu-
ments of the Catholic Church, rev. ed., ed. J. Neuner and J. Dupuis (New York:
Alba House, 1982) #1005. For an excellent analysis of the context of this de-
cree, see Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 84–130.
3. For analysis of the church’s relationship with Judaism, see my Has God
Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding (New
York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000).
4. See T. Gilmartin, “Good Friday,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). Retrieved December 30, 2008 from
New Advent: <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06643a.htm>.
5. I refer to the mid-fifth century formulation of Prosper of Aquitaine,
“lex orandi, lex credendi,” which more literally means that the law of prayer is
equivalent to the law of belief. Liturgical theologians interpret this adage in
various ways.
6. Various permutations in name and structure have occurred over the
years. Pope Paul VI established the Secretariat for Non-Christians in 1964; it
was renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 1988. The
Commission on Religious Relations with Jews is housed within the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity (originally the Secretariat for Promot-
ing Christian Unity), which began as a preparatory commission for Vatican II.
7. From the website of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, retrieved
December 29, 2008. <http://www.fsspx.org/eng/Society/cadreSociety/
cadsociety.htm>. For analysis of traditionalist Catholicism in the United
States, see Michael Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan (New York and Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1997). In 2007 Pope Benedict composed a Good Fri-
day prayer for the Jews for the small number of Catholics who worship ac-
cording to the Tridentine rite; for analysis, see my “Does the Catholic
Church Have a Mission “with” Jews or “to” Jews,” Studies in Jewish-Christ-
ian Relations 3/5 (2008). This is an e-journal: <http://escholarship.bc.edu/
scjr/vol3/iss1/5/>.
8. See the fine book by Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some
Hermeneutical Principles (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004).
9. For an incisive analysis of theological issues and perspectives, see Paul
Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
2002).
10
The Pre–Vatican II Church and Women
SUSAN A. ROSS
For those of us Catholics who grew up in the pre–Vatican II

church, the women we knew were most likely to fall into one of three
categories: married women, nuns, and the Blessed Mother. I was born
in 1950, and until my teens, all the women I knew were either mar-
ried or nuns, apart from two single women who were college class-
mates and friends of my mother’s. (The third option was already
taken.) As I contemplated what I wanted to be when I grew up, the
options seemed pretty clear: get married and have children, like my
mother (I was one of six), and have a life filled with cooking, cleaning,
chauffeuring, and the occasional bridge or golf game, or be a nun and
have the opportunity to teach, travel, and live with other educated
women. For me, the choice seemed pretty clear, especially if I wanted
to have time to read, play the piano, and travel. Yes, there were those
other issues, like celibacy, poverty, and—the one I worried most
about—obedience; the chance of having a superior who might not un-
derstand you; or having to wear those habits in the hot summer. But
such things seemed tolerable and I knew that I didn’t want to be a
housewife.
I was also fortunate during my high school years to study at a
school run by a religious order of highly educated women—the Reli-
gious of the Sacred Heart. I had had the occasional experience of a
less-educated and unhappy nun in the seven years of parochial school
before and during the time I went to the “Convent,” but for the most
47
48 SUSAN A. ROSS
part, I came to know some very intelligent and caring women. As it

turned out, Vatican II took place and the women’s liberation move-
ment began in earnest while I was in my teens, and I didn’t become a
nun after all. But in some very profound ways, the influence of those
pre–Vatican II nuns still plays a big role in my life.
Options for Women

The recent film adaptation of the play Doubt offers some images
of women’s lives in the Church before Vatican II. There is Sister Aloy-
sius, the main character, who clings stubbornly to the authoritarian
world of Tridentine Catholicism; Sister James, younger and more
open to the possibilities beginning to emerge from the council (the
play and movie are set in 1964), and Mrs. Miller, the mother of the
student whom Sister Aloysius suspects is being molested by Father
Flynn, the pastor. All of these women operate within narrow confines.
Sister Aloysius, the principal of the parish school, is in charge of the
other nuns and the students but is ultimately subject to the authority
of the pastor; Sister James is subject to her superior, Sister Aloysius;
and Mrs. Miller is subject to the rage of her husband, who is physically
and emotionally abusing his son, as well as to the racism of 1964 New
York. They all know the limits of their situations and try to manage as
best they can. From the vantage point of forty-five years later, it can
seem that these women exist in a world of few choices—subject to
male authority in one form or another. Yet even in this male-domi-
nated world, Sister Aloysius is able to challenge Father Flynn and, de-
spite her doubts, has a powerful effect on the lives of those around her.
I remember well the world of 1964 and have no desire to live in
it today. In many ways, the opportunities for women then pale in com-
parison to what we see today. As a college senior in the early 1970s, I
watched some of my classmates rejoice over their engagement rings
and wondered what they planned to do with their lives after they had
achieved their dream of marriage. But if we judge that world only by
the standards of the early twenty-first century, we do an injustice to
the many women who found creative ways of living their faith and
their life in those years before the women’s movement came into its
own. There are indeed some things that might be worth remembering
and retrieving from that world.
In the pre–Vatican II church, religious communities for women
offered an alternative to the traditional path of marriage and children.
The Pre–Vatican II Church and Women 49
Some women, such as Sister Ann Ida Gannon, B.V.M., president of

Mundelein College (now a part of Loyola University Chicago) from
1957 to 1975, gained their PhDs, served on educational and corpo-
rate boards, and were role models for young college women who as-
pired to live lives of challenge and contribution to their communities.
While there were, of course, many nuns who were unhappy or even
mean-spirited—and are still portrayed in popular culture as the “typi-
cal nun”—most of the nuns I knew combined a graciousness and a
toughness that continues to inspire me.
Young women today have so many more opportunities than were
ever even imaginable in the pre–Vatican II church. I recall my surprise
not so many years ago when a young woman student told me that she
had worked as a highway construction worker over the summer—a
job, she said, that paid far better than retail or child care (jobs that I
had had during my summer vacations). But there are other issues for
women today that are pernicious: the idea that casual sex is a matter
of course, or that we constantly need new (designer) clothes. I sup-
port and applaud the possibilities for women today in church and so-
ciety, including those of being chancellor of a diocese or pastoral ad-
ministrator of a parish, or—in other denominations—even ordination.
Still, the discipline, graciousness, and toughness that the nuns of the
pre–Vatican II church modeled for me are qualities worth retrieving.
I see young women practicing these virtues in new, post–Vatican II
ways: joining the volunteer organizations, such as the Jesuit Volun-
teer Corps, seeking work in social service agencies, or fighting do-
mestic violence.
Old Virtues for a New Time

The discipline of religious life, in its best sense, is worth retriev-
ing: regular time for prayer, meaningful work, and a community of
like-minded people. In the current economic crisis (I write this in
early 2009), we have recently been reminded by our new president
that we need to live responsible lives. The nuns of the pre–Vatican II
church lived in very constrained circumstances, but these conditions
also forged a toughness that they passed on to their students: life was
not easy, but we were privileged to have the community of the
church and the school, and we had a responsibility to give back—to
our families, our church, our communities. The discipline of a regu-
lated life, with times for prayer, teaching, meals, and recreation was
50 SUSAN A. ROSS
sometimes, no doubt, rigid and grim. But there is nevertheless a wis-

dom in sticking to a schedule and paying attention to how we spend
our time that is well worth retrieving. And the graciousness that I
encounter especially in the women religious I have known and con-
tinue to know, including Sister Ann Ida, a graciousness that is born
out of a deep self-awareness that can come only from long hours of
contemplative prayer and dedication to one’s work, is something
that all of us, men and women, corporate executives and health care
aides alike, can hope to develop as well.
The things that are worth retrieving from the women religious of
the pre–Vatican II church are not their habits, their uniformity, their
harsh discipline meted out to children, but rather the virtues that lay
at the heart of their vocation and that too often went unseen and un-
appreciated by the Church. The graciousness that, at its heart, was a
loving acceptance of oneself and of God’s grace; the discipline that was
a mature way of living with one’s weaknesses; and the toughness that
came from seeing life’s difficulties and refusing to be overcome by
them—all of these were (and are) qualities that we need today more
than ever.
11
Sin
“Don’t Lose All That Old-Time Catholic Guilt”
CHARLES E. CURRAN
There was much activity in pre–Vatican II Catholic churches on

Saturday afternoon and evening—not for eucharistic liturgies but for
the sacrament of Penance (usually called “Confession”). Sin played a
very significant role in Catholic life. All Catholics felt an obligation to
go to confession at least once a year; devout Catholics went much
more frequently; Catholic schoolchildren went at least monthly and
often weekly. As a seminarian in Rome in the 1950s I can remember
coming back to the seminary after a four-week vacation. When I told
the confessor, “My last confession was four weeks ago,” he said quite
sternly, “Welcome back to the Church.”
Through catechism classes and sermons Catholics were conscious
of sin as an offense against the law of God. Mortal sin was a serious of-
fense against the law of God which was understood to occur quite fre-
quently and involved the loss of God’s grace. The very word “mortal”
comes from the Latin word mors meaning death. Thus, mortal sin
brought about spiritual death and condemnation to hell. Venial sin in-
volved a lesser offense against the law of God. The difference between
moral and venial sin was based on the seriousness of the act itself. To
prepare for confession the person made an examination of conscience
to determine what sins had been committed. The contrite penitent
then made a firm purpose of amendment to avoid such sins in the fu-
ture and to live a better Christian life.
51
52 CHARLES E. CURRAN
The strong emphasis on sin had the negative effect of creating a

false sense of guilt (there are many stories about “Catholic guilt”)
and scrupulosity—the fear that one would commit sin no matter
what one did.
From Law (or Act) to Relationship

Much has changed in the post–Vatican II understanding of sin and
most of it, but not all, is for the better.
Sin is no longer understood primarily as an act against the law of
God but as the violation of relationships. An important Vatican II de-
velopment in understanding the moral life of the human person put
greater emphasis on the person and the person’s relationships. The
Christian exists in relationship to God, neighbor, world, and self. Such
an understanding of the human person results in a more relational un-
derstanding of mortal sin. Mortal sin involves the breaking of our re-
lationship with God and affects all our other relationships. In light of
this understanding of sin in relational terms, mortal sin is a much less
frequent occurrence in Christian life.
We can learn much from an analysis of the human relationship of
friendship. We all know from experience that friendships can be bro-
ken and this is a very serious and traumatic experience. But such
breaking of friendships is comparatively rare and by definition can-
not occur all that frequently. The same is true of our relationship of
love and friendship with God. One cannot break this loving relation-
ship five times a week or even once a week, once a month, or even
once a year!
From looking at the external act alone you cannot tell whether the
person has broken his or her relationship with God. There is an essen-
tial ambiguity about the human act looked at only in itself apart from
the person. For example, in watching Tiger Woods and me play golf
you might see just two shots—his missing a shot and my hitting a per-
fect one. You would be most foolhardy to conclude that I am a good
golfer and he is not!
In fairness, however, the pre–Vatican II approach recognized that
the act alone did not constitute a mortal sin. In addition to the act
involving serious matter, two other conditions were required for mor-
tal sin—advertence of the intellect and consent of the will. Often
these conditions were described as clear knowledge and full consent.
Sin 53
These conditions indicated the importance of the interiority of the

person involving the intellect and the will. Thus, the pre–Vatican II
approach at its best did not put all its emphasis on the external act.
But in reality the external act was often the only thing that was con-
sidered and the advertence of the intellect and consent of the will
were assumed to be present.
Some theologians developed the newer and relational approach to
mortal sin in light of the theory of the fundamental option. This
somewhat complex theory recognizes two levels or aspects in every
act—the categorical and the transcendental. The categorical is the
concrete material act that is done, while the transcendental is the
deeper unconscious relationship with God that is present in every act.
However, even those who do not accept the theory of fundamental
option still can understand mortal sin as the breaking of our relation-
ship with God which ultimately affects our relationships with neigh-
bor, world, and self.
There exists an intimate connection among all these relation-
ships. The Christian tradition appeals often to the so-called last
judgment scene in Matthew 25 which recognizes that our relation-
ship with God is known and manifested in our relationships with
our neighbor. “When I was hungry, naked, thirsty, and in prison
you helped me.” “But when, Lord, did we see you hungry, naked,
thirsty, and in prison?” “When you did it to the least of these my
sisters and brothers.”
Sin cannot be identified only with the external act looked at in it-
self. For this reason some theologians do not call acts themselves sin-
ful. External acts are right or wrong, but whether the wrong act is sin-
ful cannot be determined from just observing the act alone.
Sin as Social
Post–Vatican II theology has developed a concept of social sin or
sinful structures, which was not present before. Two reasons help to
explain this new development. First, sin was primarily understood in
its relationship to the confessional, but structures, institutions, and the
ethos did not go to confession. Second, in the pre–Vatican II Church
the social mission of the Church and the work for justice and peace
were not seen as part of the saving and redeeming work of Jesus. Life
in the world belonged to the realm of the natural as distinguished
54 CHARLES E. CURRAN
from the realm of the supernatural or of grace. Vatican II emphasized

that faith, grace, and Jesus Christ had to affect our life in this world.
The social mission of the Church was not simply the realm of the nat-
ural. A theological understanding of the mission of the Church in the
world was thus open to the social understanding of sin and its role, an
understanding that was then developed especially in liberation theol-
ogy. Social sin affects the lives of all people who live in that milieu. So-
cial sin involves the structures of institutionalized injustice, violence,
greed, consumerism, exploitation of people and nature. Christians
then are called to struggle against social sin and sinful structures
through the help of God’s love and grace in order to transform the
world toward full justice for all.
While, the post–Vatican II understanding of sin is theologically
more sound than the pre–Vatican II approach, yet the danger exists of
forgetting the reality of sin and not giving enough importance to sin
and the human capacity for it on both personal and social levels.
Sin is present in all of us. Sin here refers especially to what
pre–Vatican II theology called vices, which are the opposite of virtues.
These are the dispositions and attitudes that affect the Christian per-
son. Think, for example, of the sinful attitudes and dispositions such
as selfishness, anger, intemperateness, lack of concern for others, con-
sumerism, paying too much attention to those realities that are not
most important, the lack of thoughtfulness, gratitude, and peace in
our lives. The sinful attitudes and tendencies that are part of our per-
son are analogous to the social sin and sinful structures that affect the
life of society.
There is no possibility of growth in the Christian life if we are not
conscious of the sinful attitudes that affect our multiple relationships
with God, neighbor, world, and self. This growth is understood as
conversion by which we move away from our sinfulness and grow in
terms of the multiple relationships that constitute us as Christian per-
sons. We have to become as aware of the need to stay in shape in our
spiritual lives as we have become aware of the need to stay in shape in
our physical lives. Many people today recognize the importance of an
exercise regimen; gymnasiums and fitness centers abound in our cities;
our streets and paths are filled with bikers, joggers, and walkers. Spir-
itual health requires that we recognize attitudes and dispositions that
prevent our growth in our relationships and calls for us to overcome
these obstacles.
Sin 55
To grow in our spiritual lives as persons and to strive to overcome

the sinful structures in our milieu and society we first must become
aware of our own personal sinfulness (in the sense explained above)
and the sinful structures in our society. The pre–Vatican II and tradi-
tional practice of the examination of conscience is both helpful and
necessary. We need to take the time to reflect and recognize our short-
comings and yes—our sins. What obstacles stand in the way of my
right and loving relationships with God, neighbor, world, and self?
What are the sinful structures in our society that need to be recog-
nized and that our Christian faith requires us to struggle against?
12
From the Treasury of Vowed Women Religious

The Past Remembered, the Present Embraced
CHRISTINE VLADIMIROFF, O.S.B.
There are critical periods in a person’s lifetime that cause one to

look back and move through the rich memories of the past. Inher-
ent in that journey backward is a temptation to romanticize life at
another time. I belong to a unique generation of women religious.
We entered young and impressionable. I was seventeen years old. We
walked into the monastery and the door closed behind us and we
were in the middle of pre–Vatican II religious life of the 1950s. It
was a life untouched and removed from the world outside its walls.
We spent ten-plus years in what sociologists would call a
“total/closed institution” that would shape our identity. My gener-
ation would move on in the late 1960s and the 1970s to lead our
communities through renewal with great debate and experimenta-
tion. We explored the implications of Vatican II mandates and the
call to look at our life in the light of scripture, the signs of the times,
and the charism of our founders. It was an exhilarating time of deep
hope and promise. We now know that some new insights worked out
well as we fashioned religious life for today. It is equally clear and ev-
ident today that we made some serious mistakes in the renewal of re-
ligious life. I will celebrate my golden jubilee of fifty years of monas-
tic profession as a Benedictine sister this year. There is something to
be learned from a journey back through time. It enables us to re-
56
From the Treasury of Vowed Women Religious 57
trieve what was valuable and bring it forward in new ways. God is
found in the present time, no matter how chaotic the times appear
to be.
For me, the attraction to monastic life was transmitted by the
Benedictine women who taught me in high school. They were the
most educated, accomplished, joyous, caring women I had ever en-
countered. In my eyes they were competent and in charge of their lives
and the institutions they administered; they had a sisterly care for each
other. Their sense of belonging and commitment to the monastic en-
terprise gave meaning and purpose to their life in community. They
seemed to energize a room by just walking into it. I wanted very much
to be a part of their world.
Entering the community was crossing a threshold. I withdrew
from the familiar and was stripped of what few markers I had that
gave me personal identity. Putting on the habit of a postulant was
the first step in becoming a sister. The separation from past life was
total. Contact with family and friends was strictly limited. During the
initial years there was no access to radio or newspapers. Letter writ-
ing was restricted and censored. Formation served as a time to un-
dertake an interior journey to find your identity in the community.
It tested your resolve to live an alternative lifestyle that would re-
quire total commitment to the new and abandonment of what had
been. Identity was confirmed in the dailiness of life. A sense of com-
munity embraced you with both the joy and difficulty of living
closely with others.
The life was marked by silence, prayer, study, and manual work. It
was a life that was highly structured, with rigid boundaries established
by rank in community. Each person had an assigned role. There were
very clear expectations of how that role was to be carried out in com-
munity. Time was assigned for each activity and set the rhythm for the
day. There was little room for choice or personal decision making.
Your field of study was assigned to you with little or no consultation.
Some customs and practices did not always make sense. Though adult
women, we were at times treated as children, with no reward for ini-
tiative, creativity or responsibility—we were expected simply to be un-
questioningly obedient. Those of us in initial formation managed to
get into trouble by laughing uncontrollably at the wrong times at
table, in chapel, in times of silence. We cried with our homesickness
but knew how to console each other because this was our new family.
We learned to depend on each other totally.
58 CHRISTINE VLADIMIROFF, O.S.B.
Prayer
In the silence of gathering outside of chapel for statio, long lines

of habited figures moved in rank into the chapel for the Divine Office.
The day began in choir with Lauds at 5:30 AM; the Little Hours inter-
rupted our manual labor and/or study at mid-day and Vespers came
at the end of the work day around 5 PM. Meals were an opportunity
to take our turns serving each other by waiting tables. We ate most
meals in silence unless it was a particularly important feast. Finally, the
time for recreation came around and we sat and talked to each other
in a large group until the bell rang for Compline. In silence the com-
munity moved once more to chapel. Night Silence or the Grand Si-
lence followed and the day ended.
The very rhythm of the day and the chant of the prayers were
constant reminders that we had chosen a way to seek God that de-
manded a deep spirituality to sustain us in our quest. The prayer and
the silence stirred in us the desire to reach the holiness that we aspired
to as we studied and read about the women who went before us. The
psalms and the scriptures were slowly shaping our path to the God
with whom we fell in love in those fervent days of formation. On
feasts, the choir robes added to the solemnity and the Latin chant
soared and we were carried by the joy of the festive celebration.
Prayer was not a multiplication of actions or words or trips to the
chapel but an ever deepening enveloping of our life in the presence
of God.
Community
We dressed alike and so visually we witnessed for all to see that
we were truly “sisters” and that our lives were intimately bound to-
gether. Whether we went out to college to study, to town to buy new
shoes or on an errand, we never went alone. A sister companion went
along. Our older sisters were kind and tried to ease any harshness the
life might hold for the young sisters. They would share their memo-
ries of their initial days in community and we were socialized into our
history through their stories of community. Our elders embodied the
deep story of our charism and spirit. When we celebrated their ju-
bilees, we knew that their fidelity would make possible our fidelity in
the future.
From the Treasury of Vowed Women Religious 59
Ministry
We were told that we were about God’s work, and our obedience
to assignments for ministry brought the grace we needed. In a hurt-
ing world we shaped institutions to reach the poor and the suffering.
The Church in the United States founded the parochial system of
schools, and the presence and work of religious sisters was needed as
a labor force. Very often, with little or no preparation, we were placed
as teachers in a classroom. Present-day professionalism would resist
this; it was a practice that caused personal suffering for many.
We were not alone in a school; we had mentors and master teach-
ers among us and we learned from each other. It was a common effort
and a common goal that we shared as we staffed a school and lived
community life in our parish residences. There were hard moments,
and difficult pastors, but we learned to make our own happiness as we
worked together in the ministry of education. We were assigned to
mission houses in parishes throughout the diocese with a group of sis-
ters not of our selection. We learned to live with each other; we
learned to find our place in a new group as we were moved and as-
signed by the superior. These assignments broadened our experience
and helped us learn to appreciate the gifts that others bring. Each sis-
ter had something to teach and if you let her into your life you would
be richer for the experience. To this day we share the stories of those
mission days and laughter comes easily as we remember another time.
For Our Time

The culture for women religious during the pre–Vatican II days
was total and embraced every detail of life. There were protective bar-
riers and behaviors that separated religious from the prevailing culture.
The group was shaped by a strong tradition of values, hopes, and as-
pirations that knit the individuals into a living community. It is not
possible or desirable to replicate that kind of isolation again. But we
can deepen our grasp of the tradition and be formed by it and become
holy women as our foremothers before us.
In the history of religious life we are at a defining point that holds
promise and peril. It will take deliberate and intentional action on our
part to create the future together with the best of the past and the
freshness of life in the present. In our day we are to witness in the
60 CHRISTINE VLADIMIROFF, O.S.B.
midst of the culture to a new way of life that gives glimpses of the
reign of God alive in human community. The reality of religious life is
that it is first and foremost a gift of God to the Church. Community
is formed, lived, and sustained by people whose fidelity and integrity
are manifest by their care for one another and their resolve to bring
about God’s reign on earth.
Whatever may be the future of vowed religious life for women, we
can always learn from the faith and commitment of our foremothers
who challenged their times as we must our times.
13
The Pre–Vatican II Parish

Haven in a Heartless World
JAMES J. BACIK
What were Catholic parishes in the United States like in the

decades before the Second Vatican Council opened in 1962? What
were their greatest limitations and what can we learn from them in our
ongoing effort to renew parish life?
Pre-conciliar Parish Life

Let us begin with a composite sketch of how one family experi-
enced parish life in a Midwest city prior to the council. Bob and Kathy
loved St. Catherine’s parish, a mostly white, middle-class faith com-
munity that was the vital center of their religious and social lives. They
taught their four children to have great respect for the pastor and the
three associate priests who lived in the parish rectory and provided
them with the Mass and other sacraments. The whole family usually
attended the 9 AM Low Mass on Sunday, using their English transla-
tion missals to follow the priest, who said the Mass in Latin with his
back to the people. Bob liked this Mass because it was brief—no
hymns sung, no congregational responses, no greeting of peace, no
partaking of the chalice. Now and then, Kathy and the kids attended
the 11 AM High Mass to enjoy the beautiful hymns and Latin re-
sponses sung by the parish choir.
61
62 JAMES J. BACIK
St. Catherine’s parish provided the sacraments that structured the

spiritual lives of the parishioners. Bob and Kathy had all their children
baptized on Sunday afternoon, soon after their births—so soon that
Kathy could not be present for the baptism of her two oldest. All of
the children made their first confessions and communions in the sec-
ond grade and were confirmed in the fourth grade. Once a month on
a Saturday afternoon Kathy took the children to confess their sins pri-
vately to the priest in a confessional where they would be anonymous.
The boys in the family began serving Mass in the fifth grade after
learning all the proper responses in Latin. This opportunity was not
open to the girls.
All the children attended the parish grade school for free, made
possible by the sisters who taught all eight grades with very little finan-
cial remuneration. The boys played football, basketball, and softball
for the parish grade-school teams, competing against other Catholic
schools in the city. There were no opportunities for the girls to partic-
ipate in sports other than as cheerleaders. The girls did have promi-
nent roles in school plays and had the opportunity to be chosen to
crown the Blessed Virgin Mary in the annual May Crowning.
Bob was involved in the Holy Name Society that sponsored the
annual rally to give public witness to the Catholic faith and the
monthly “communion breakfasts” that featured a guest speaker after
the 11 AM Mass. Bob was also an active member of the St. Vincent de
Paul Society that gave aid to the poor and needy. The pastor ap-
pointed him to a two-year term as a councilman responsible for ap-
proving the parish budget prepared by the pastor and the financial
records kept by the parish bookkeeper. In all these roles, Bob had to
learn how to get along with individuals who had very different back-
grounds and viewpoints.
For Kathy, the parish was a source of stability and pride. She was
confident that her children were getting a solid grounding in the faith
from the parish grade school. It pleased her that the priests visited the
classrooms regularly to have contact with the children and to offer re-
ligious instruction. The sisters were good teachers and did a great job
of preparing the youngsters for first confession and Communion. As
an active member of the Altar and Rosary Society, Kathy took great
pride in making the church look clean and beautiful. Her social life was
centered in the parish and included the monthly parties and dances she
attended with Bob as well as the weekly bowling nights with her
women friends in the parish league. She loved the devotional life of the
The Pre–Vatican II Parish 63
parish: the ashes and palms; the blessing of throats and food; the spe-
cial celebrations of Mary and the saints. Periodically, she took some of
the children to the Thursday Sorrowful Mother Devotions and the
Friday Stations of the Cross. She and Bob never missed the annual
Parish Mission when a visiting priest (usually a Redemptorist or
Paulist) would give a series of fiery sermons against the sins of drunk-
enness, sloth, and lust, combined with a plea for frequent confession.
Kathy always felt a great sense of pride when priests from all over the
diocese came for the annual Forty Hours Devotion that included
Benediction in their beautiful church.
Other Parishes
Not all Catholic parishes before Vatican II were exactly like St.
Catherine. Over half did not have a grade school and relied on CCD
programs to instruct the youth in their Catholic faith. Predominantly
Hispanic and black parishes had their own distinct customs. National
parishes, comprising about 17 percent of Catholic parishes in 1960,
were also committed to preserving ethnic customs and practices. Rural
parishes had special celebrations, such as Rogation Days for fruitful
harvests. Parishioners in recently founded suburban parishes relied less
on the parish for their social activities. On the other hand, most
Catholics of the period could identify with many of the values and at-
titudes of Bob and Kathy: their respect for priests; their love and loy-
alty for their parish; their appreciation of the Mass and other sacra-
ments; their reliance on a rich devotional life for spiritual nourishment;
and their strong sense of Catholic identity fostered by parish life.
Limitations
A theology of the parish that views the Church not as a static insti-
tution but as a dynamic event provides a basis for evaluating pre–
Vatican II parishes. A parish is not simply a segment of the larger Church
or the personal possession of a male, celibate clergy. It is, rather, the con-
crete actualization of the universal Church; the Body of Christ in action
in a particular area; the people of God gathered for worship and mission;
the pilgrim community wending its way though history.
From this theological perspective, we can recognize the severe
limitations imposed on pre-conciliar parishes by the clericalism that
gave so much power and responsibility to the clergy and constricted
64 JAMES J. BACIK
the contributions of the parishioners who were expected to “pay, pray

and obey.” We can also appreciate the great energy unleashed by the
Vatican II reforms that have empowered baptized women and men to
take a more significant role in the administrative, liturgical, and min-
isterial activities of parishes today.
Catholic Identity
In the pre-conciliar era, parishioners generally enjoyed a com-
monly held, clearly etched sense of Catholic identity that was a source
of pride and solidarity, manifested, for example, in public rallies and
the over 80 percent Catholic vote for John Kennedy in 1960. During
the last half-century this form of Catholic identity has gradually faded,
for various reasons: the demise of the Catholic subculture; greater
awareness of pluralism in the Catholic community; religious education
programs that stress open discussion more than clear content; progress
in the ecumenical movement; the clergy sex-abuse scandal; and sharp
disputes over the best public policies to combat abortion.
Many Catholics today, especially among the younger generations,
are seeking a thicker, more secure sense of Catholic identity. Nostalgic
efforts to return to the pre-conciliar era, however, are doomed to fail-
ure precisely because of developments in society, culture, and the
Church. Catholic identity has a history as it struggles to remain faith-
ful to its long and rich tradition, guided by scripture and authoritative
teaching, while at the same time adapting to changing historical and
cultural conditions. We need to find pride and solidarity today in es-
sentials: a sacramental sense disposed to find the infinite in the finite
and divine grace in ordinary life; a fundamental respect for the whole
Christian tradition; an appreciation of the Petrine ministry; a positive
sense of human nature and the value of reason, philosophy, and sci-
ence; an embrace of Mary and the communion of saints; and a com-
mitment to the works of justice and peace.
Our great resource for forming a viable contemporary Catholic
identity is the reformed liturgy celebrated each weekend in parishes
around the country. The inherent socializing power of the Eucharist is
enhanced by prayerful presiding, effective preaching, and uplifting
music. Christian service projects that include theological reflection are
a great way to help parishioners, especially young people, to develop a
Catholic identity committed to concrete acts of charity and the cause
of justice and peace.
The Pre–Vatican II Parish 65
Parish Loyalty
Parish loyalty was a prominent feature of Catholic life before the

Second Vatican Council. Parishioners generally felt a sense of pride in
their home parish. Boundaries were important and respected. Loyalty
to their parish forced Catholics to interact with various types of people,
including those who were different or disagreeable. Parishioners had to
learn how to negotiate with others who held different views. In the
contemporary world, loyalty of all types is greatly diminished. A signif-
icant number of young Catholics feel free to abandon their heritage and
join other denominations that meet their needs. It is common for
Catholics to shop around for a parish that appeals to them. It is easier
to switch parishes than to battle polarization and manage pluralism.
Efforts to revive Catholic loyalty today should begin with fidelity
to Christ as witnessed in the scriptures, church teaching, and the
Christian tradition. The virtue of loyalty needs this rich soil in order
to develop and flourish. Loyalty prompts Catholics to remain in the
Church and to be part of the ongoing effort to make it a more credi-
ble sign of Christ and his teaching. Parishes that utilize the talents of
parishioners and serve their spiritual needs will earn their loyalty over
a period of time. Catholics who associate only with like-minded believ-
ers run the risk of settling for narrow perspectives and cramped atti-
tudes. We all can grow spiritually by engaging with parishioners who
express diverse viewpoints. The virtue of loyalty today prompts dia-
logue that seeks common ground and collaboration that serves the
common good.
Parish Devotions
Recent developments in university parishes around the country
suggest that a significant number of young Catholics are interested in
reviving elements of the devotional life that was so important to im-
migrant Catholics. After Vatican II, pastors and religious educators put
more emphasis on scripture and the liturgy as the solid ground for a
viable contemporary spirituality and less emphasis on the traditional
devotions. At university parishes today, however, it is not unusual for
students to take the initiative in organizing various devotional prac-
tices: for example, having Benediction along with regular adoration of
the Blessed Sacrament; reciting the Rosary in common; wearing
66 JAMES J. BACIK
medals and scapulars; participating in novenas; celebrating saints’ days;

and consecrating themselves to Mary. This significant development
among collegians, even if limited and driven by diverse motives, sug-
gests that parishes can meet a current spiritual need by retrieving ele-
ments of the rich devotional life of the past and placing those elements
in a solid theological context. For instance, Benediction can be explic-
itly related to the eucharistic liturgy where we offer ourselves along
with Christ as gift to the Father, and Marian devotions can emphasize
Mary’s role as model of the Church and exemplar of Christian disciple-
ship. In this way, parishes can provide a richer devotional life that en-
hances a contemporary spirituality grounded in scripture and liturgy.
All across the United States today, we find vibrant Catholic
parishes that witness to the wisdom of the Vatican II reforms, espe-
cially those that unleashed the energy and talents of baptized women
and men in service to the Church and the world. As parishes continue
to adapt to a rapidly changing world, we can learn important lessons
from the pre-conciliar parishes that fostered a clear sense of Catholic
identity, promoted parish loyalty, and celebrated a rich devotional life.
14
Catholic Teaching on Sexuality

From Romanticism to Reality
CHRISTINE E. GUDORF
The period after World War II (1941–1945) until the end of the
Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was a dynamic one for Ameri-
can Catholics. The immigration of Catholics to America peaked be-
tween 1880 and 1910, with immigrants settling in urban ethnic neigh-
borhoods in the East and Midwest, where their children and
grandchildren remained. With the return of soldiers from Europe and
the Pacific between 1945 and 1947, urban Catholic families experi-
enced dramatic shifts. Though church teaching on sexuality and the
family had remained virtually unchanged since the Council of Trent
ended in 1563—and was one of the few areas of Catholic teaching that
would remain relatively untouched by Vatican II—the times them-
selves would reshape American Catholic families. Americans had sav-
ings because military production had kept employment high during
the war, but there had been little consumer production to spend wages
on. New highways and suburban housing accommodated millions of
young people who had postponed marriage and/or children because
of the war and were now ready to settle down into domesticity.
Women left employment by the millions, spurred on by government
campaigns encouraging them to give their jobs to returning service-
men. The baby boom began.
67
68 CHRISTINE E. GUDORF
Catholic Romanticism
For Catholics, the postwar romanticization of marriage and

motherhood in American society was completely congruent with
church teaching and with the inherited folkways of the Catholic com-
munity. Church opposition to contraception had begun to fade in
Protestant communities following the 1934 Lambeth Conference of
Anglican bishops, but was still strong in the Catholic Church. Until
well into the urban-to-suburban population shift, Catholic neighbor-
hoods were characterized by tight-knit ethnic parishes in which many
of the cultural attitudes brought from Europe, including those sur-
rounding marriage and family, still endured. Marriage was largely un-
derstood as a contract to partner in complementary roles (male
breadwinner and female homemaker) in raising a family, with marital
sex primarily aimed at procreation; this understanding reflected tradi-
tional Catholic teaching. The pope during the forties and fifties was
Pius XII, who responded to post-war nostalgia for “normalcy” with
an enthusiastic romanticization of women as mothers, of large fami-
lies, and of parents who sacrificed for such families. Take, for exam-
ple, two of his many utterances:
Now a woman’s function, a woman’s way, a woman’s natural

bent, is motherhood. Every woman is called to be a mother, a
mother in a physical sense, or a mother in a sense more spiri-
tual and more exalted, yet real, nonetheless.1
and
A cradle consecrates the mother, more cradles sanctify her and

glorify her in the eyes of her husband, her children, the
Church and the nation.2
Pius XII reflected the attitudes of his day. Given the huge loss of
life in Europe during World War II and the postponement or interrup-
tions of family life for five to ten years, the European yearning for do-
mesticity was understandable and accounts for some of Pius’s romantic
language. But he shared with his predecessors, and indeed with his suc-
cessors, some very basic and traditional understandings of sex/gender:
that women were made to be mothers and homemakers; that the head-
Catholic Teaching on Sexuality 69
ship of men in families called for loving submission by women and chil-
dren; that men had primary responsibility for family support but that
when women had to work outside the home they should receive equal
pay and should stick to work in line with their nature (work calling for
care and compassion, not judgment). The very sensibility of women,
according to the popes, made them excellent mothers, teachers and
protectors of the weak, but also made them easily seduced and de-
ceived, so that they needed the protection of more rational men.3
Family First
While Pius XII spoke very little about sexuality, the roles of men
and women in the family, and especially motherhood, were favorite
topics. He instructed mothers on breastfeeding babies—bottles he con-
sidered a selfish convenience. Pius did not need to address sexuality—
the rules regarding sexuality were universal and long-standing in the
Church: there was to be no sex outside marriage, sex in marriage was
for procreation, and procreation was to be unobstructed. Anything
tending to produce sexual arousal was a near occasion of sin and to be
avoided. The rules were drilled into Catholic youth in the parochial
schools, often by nuns, whose numbers were stretched during the
fifties and sixties to staff all the new suburban parochial schools in ad-
dition to the urban ones. Catholic writers and directors educated in
these schools later poked fun at nuns as sexually repressed, citing, for
example, such things as bans on patent leather shoes for girls because
such shoes might reflect the girls’ panties and arouse young boys. But
the sisters were only passing on traditional wisdom in the Church: that
sexual arousal should be avoided because it was dangerously difficult
to control; that women had the power to arouse even when they were
unconscious of it. Of course, the real practical danger of sex outside
marriage was pregnancy. Nothing was more scandalous than a preg-
nant and unmarried Catholic girl. Such girls were forced to drop out
of school; they were surreptitiously sent away (to relatives or homes
for unwed mothers) and returned without babies.
During this period, Catholic families on average were larger than
other groups. My mother had nine living children from twelve preg-
nancies in eleven years. Her sister had eight living children from ten
pregnancies in fourteen years. Our families were considered medium-
large in the Catholic milieu; truly large were families with a dozen or
more children. One farm wife in our parish gave birth to and raised
70 CHRISTINE E. GUDORF
twenty-one children—and threw hay bales like a twenty-year-old. Pub-

lic health and the science of medicine had advanced to a point that,
combined with a prosperous economy that kept nutrition levels high,
allowed birth rates never seen before. In past ages, pregnancy levels
were often very high but the number of live births, especially the num-
ber of children surviving to adulthood, was much lower. In mid-twen-
tieth-century America, almost all pregnancies produced live children
and most of those children survived.
Nuns worked for a fraction of the cost for lay teachers, allowing
low tuition in parish schools; tuition for second or third children was
even less or nothing. Every night my parents quizzed each of us on
Baltimore Catechism questions assigned in religion class; they led
prayers before and after meals and at bedtime as well as weekly family
Rosary. Fourth through eighth graders constituted the parish choir,
ensuring regular attendance among our many relatives. During May,
families were often ritualed-out, between attending the parish May
procession, First Communions for their own children, and then First
Communions for nieces and nephews at nearby parishes.
A New Day for Catholic Sex

For Catholic baby boomers raised with many siblings and numer-
ous aunts, uncles, and cousins, the changes following the advent of the
birth-control pill in the sixties were traumatic. Though slower to use
the pill than other groups because of church rules, as the cost of rear-
ing and educating children increased and the ability of a single wage-
earner to support a family decreased, Catholic couples began ignoring
the Vatican ban on contraception. By the nineties family gatherings
had shrunk in size. My mother had four siblings, my father seven; I
have eight, my husband four. But my eight siblings and I gave birth to
an average of 2.4 children (augmented by several adoptions); my hus-
band and his four siblings had an average of 2.0 children. As the last
ethnic parishes disappear, and suburban ones turn greyer with baby
boomers, parish life is more anonymous. There are not only fewer chil-
dren to bind families into shared projects, but also fewer nuns and less
parental time available, since most mothers work outside the home in
order to afford parochial school tuition or even basic sustenance.
While fertility and domesticity raged among American Catholics
of the 1950s and 1960s, no one spoke about sex. There was no sex ed-
ucation in the schools, Pre-Cana Conferences for the engaged taught
Catholic Teaching on Sexuality 71
every aspect of marriage other than sex, and few parents talked to their
children about sex. Television and movies suggested but never de-
picted sex, and all TV couples slept in twin beds. Yet my generation
grew up on stories of the frustrated longing of parents separated by
war, and giggled tremendously at discovering parents kissing.
Only in the late sixties, as the pill began affecting fertility rates,
Catholics and other Americans slowly began to talk both publicly and
within families about sexuality. With these discussions inside and out-
side the Church, sexual practice began to change, even though most
church teaching did not. By the seventies, the Church had begun to
stress love rather than duty in marriage in response to the post-war ro-
manticization of marriage and the home. I can still remember the em-
barrassment of my very undemonstrative mother-in-law at first being
pulled onto her husband’s lap, to the grins and applause of their mar-
ried, much more demonstrative children. Contract language for mar-
riage had largely disappeared by the time of Pope Paul VI. The coun-
cil, too, had contributed to this shift by speaking of shared “parental”
responsibilities in marriage, rather than separating maternal and pater-
nal responsibilities. John Paul II entirely replaced the contract lan-
guage of duties with the language of loving partners.
We can have hope that Catholics are growing into Vatican II’s vi-
sion of marriage as “a covenant of life and love.”
Notes
1. Pius XII, “Address to Italian Women,” October 21, 1945, AAS 37

(1945): 287.
2. Pius XII, “Le vingt-cinquieme,” July 26, 1955, Osservatore Romano,
July 28, 1955; translation: Papal Teachings: Woman in the Modern World
(Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1959), 37.
3. For numerous examples, see Christine E. Gudorf, Catholic Social
Teaching on Liberation Themes (Washington, DC: University Press of Amer-
ica, 1980), especially 264–302 on Pope Pius XII.
15
The Afterlife
Death, Judgment, Purgatory, Heaven, Hell
ZACHARY HAYES, O.F.M.
In order to get some orientation for a consideration of changes

that have taken place in the theological area known as eschatology
(“the last things”), it might be useful to recall the way in which Chris-
tian art over the centuries has presented a vision of the afterlife in var-
ious paintings as well as in literature. I have in mind the great painting
of the last judgment by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel and the
work of many other artists with vivid imaginations over the ages. In
literary form, there is the Divine Comedy of Dante (1265–1321)
which includes the Paradiso, the Purgatorio, and the Inferno. In these
examples one sees, reads, and thinks of the terrible chasm between the
souls of the dead and God represented by the various levels of descent
into hell. These artistic and literary representations were taken so seri-
ously and literally that a number of theologians, well into the nine-
teenth century, actually calculated the degrees of heat at the different
levels of the underworld; for, after all, not all those who have been lost
deserve the same degree of punishment.
A New Perspective
This was, to a great extent, characteristic of Roman Catholicism’s
theological understanding of the afterlife until well into the modern pe-
riod. But gradually, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
72
The Afterlife 73
turies, a stronger sense of the historical nature of Christian doctrine en-

tered the picture. And, specifically from the perspective of critical his-
torical biblical studies, it became possible to see the biblical language
about the other world as largely metaphorical rather than as literally,
physically descriptive. At the same time, from a more philosophical per-
spective, it became possible to see biblical eschatological language as a
specific religious way of dealing with the history of human hope. The
language of human hope is commonly language about a future, and
biblical language of hope is language about a future seen from a specif-
ically Judaeo-Christian perspective. Thus, the language of theological
eschatology for Christians is seen as language about a mysterious future
for human existence that transcends human history, but can be spoken
about only in the language that human beings generate within their
historical existence, since that is the only type of language available for
human beings to use, even in the case of scripture. This insight in the
twentieth century would lead to a rich understanding of the theology
of hope as a form of the Christian theology of history.
Given this context, heaven and hell are seen by theology as
metaphors for ultimate success or ultimate failure as the outcome of
human history, both for the human individual and for the human com-
munity as a whole. Purgatory is seen primarily as a symbol of the need
for further maturation, either in the experience of dying itself, or in the
aftermath of death and prior to the experience of heaven. This teach-
ing relates to the conviction that some people die in the state of grace,
but they are still burdened with some degree of temporal punishment
for sins already forgiven, or for venial sins that still remain unforgiven,
and therefore they must undergo some sort of purgation either in death
itself or after death before entering fully into the immediate presence of
God. It was this idea that was presented in so much of Christian art, es-
pecially in the medieval and Renaissance periods. But, unfortunately, all
too often, at least in the popular imagination, heaven, hell and purga-
tory became a form of other-worldly geography.
It is interesting to think of these theological metaphors in relation
to non-theological studies of human death and dying. From a clinical
and psychological perspective, the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross has
been of great significance. It has helped greatly to see the experience
of death as a deeply human experience. The theological thought of the
twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner was very influential in
this context. He developed a deeply anthropological understanding of
the process of human dying from a philosophical point of view. This,
74 ZACHARY HAYES, O.F.M.
then, he related to a theological perspective. In such a context, death

is seen not simply as something biological that happens from outside,
but as a process in which the person is deeply engaged interiorly, and
for which one prepares by the quality of life one has attempted to live
throughout one’s personal history.
This theological understanding seemed to be enacted before me in
1963 when I stood with other friends around the bed of a dying friar
in Germany. We had carried out the entire ritual of the Church as cus-
tomary at that time, a ritual in which the dying friar himself took part.
When it was completed, he sat up in bed and called out: “This is the
end of the following of Christ.” With that, he lay back on the bed and
never spoke another word. This was the first time I had ever experi-
enced a human person dying. Seeing the very active way this man was
involved in the process opened me to wonder about the mystery of
human dying. What is really going on in a dying person? Much insight
was offered to me later when I read about the clinical work of Kübler-
Ross. And the work of Karl Rahner would lead me to a a deeper un-
derstanding of the theological language dealing with death and its af-
termath, which is the concern of Christian eschatology.
An Emerging Consciousness
From the perspective of Christian eschatology, we can say that
heaven is not a symbol of some pre-existing, physical place in some
other-worldly geography. Rather, it is the symbol of the final, fulfilling
relationship between God and creation envisioned by Christian faith.
This has been realized in a pre-eminent sense in the case of Christ,
whose life and tragic death led to his glorification in the resurrection
and ascension. And it remains to be realized for the rest of humanity
through subsequent history, both individual and collective. In the case
of Christ, theologians speak of realized eschatology, since the goal that
God has in mind for creation has been realized in the destiny of Christ.
Insofar as that which has been realized in Christ anticipates the collec-
tive destiny of God’s creation, which is still not realized in the whole
of creation, there is a future dimension to eschatology.
Writing on this subject in one of his earlier books, Pope Benedict
XVI states this in very compact language. Heaven exists because Jesus
Christ has given human existence a place in the being of God. Heaven
is primarily a personal relation which is always marked by its historical
The Afterlife 75
origin in the death and resurrection of Christ. As for the rest of hu-
manity, we are in heaven to the degree that we are near Christ.1
As a religious tradition, Christianity is marked by a strong convic-
tion concerning the importance of human freedom. The actual out-
come of human history, both individually and collectively, is not pre-
determined by God alone. Rather, a goal is offered by God, but its
realization is brought about by the action of human freedom in its way
of relating to the goal that God freely holds open to it. Hell is a sym-
bol for the possibility that a person may freely close himself or herself
to the love and grace of God and choose an existence of total isolation
rather than one of communion with God. As Rahner has formulated
it, metaphors such as fire, worms, and darkness all point in the same
direction, namely to: “. . . the possibility of man being finally lost and
estranged from God in all the dimensions of his existence.”2
The language about heaven, on the other hand, is language about
the possibility of the positive outcome of human history in relation to
God. It is language about the final, definitive relation of a loving union
between a creature that is called to love by a God who, in the deepest
sense, is the purest reality of loving being. This mystery is called to
mind by symbolic language about the heavenly wedding feast and
other such evocative metaphors. Because of the dying and rising of
Jesus Christ, therefore, Christians live with the positive hope that our
eternal future is to be wrapped forever in the embrace of a loving God
in a way that transcends history.
Summarizing this all in very compact language, Hans Urs von
Balthasar has written: “God is the Last Thing of the creature. Gained,
He is its paradise; lost, He is its hell; as demanding, He is its judgment;
as cleansing, He is its purgatory.”
Notes
1. Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatologie: Kleine Katholische Dogmatik, IX

(Regensburg, 1977), 190
2. Karl Rahner, Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum
Mundi (New York: Crossroad, 1975), 603.
CXReclaiming Pt.II 11/6/09 11:58 AM Page 77
II
PERSONALITIES
16
John Courtney Murray

Theologian of Religious Freedom
DAVID HOLLENBACH, S.J.
John Courtney Murray, S.J., was the most creative and influential
United States theologian of the twentieth century. One of the clearest
indicators of his influence was the appearance of his portrait on the
cover of Time magazine on December 12, 1960. Murray’s great con-
tribution was to initiate a deep dialogue between the American expe-
rience of religious freedom and the long Catholic tradition’s under-
standing of how the Christian community should relate to the
social-political life of the surrounding society.
Background to Murray’s Contribution

Murray played a major role at the Second Vatican Council as one
of the principal drafters of the council’s Declaration on Religious Free-
dom (Dignitatis Humanae). Appreciation of how Murray drew deeply
on his profound knowledge of the pre–Vatican II traditions as he
worked to shape the council itself can contribute much to our under-
standing of the council’s continuing importance today.
Through the modern historical era up to the time of Pope John
XXIII and the council, official Catholic teachings approached religious
freedom with suspicion and even hostility. For example, in 1832 Pope
Gregory XVI declared that the right to freedom of conscience is an
79
80 DAVID HOLLENBACH, S.J.
“insanity” (dileramentum). In large part through Murray’s influence,

a dramatic shift in this position occurred at Vatican II, which declared
that “The right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dig-
nity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the re-
vealed word of God and by reason itself” (Dignitatis Humanae, 2).
Why was such a shift necessary, and how did it occur?
Most Americans today find it hard even to imagine living in a society
where freedom of religion is not protected. The First Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution states that the government “shall make no law respect-
ing an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Thus, most Americans take their freedom of religious belief for granted
and presume that other societies should have religious freedom as well.
Pre-conciliar Catholicism, however, feared this religious freedom for
three reasons. First, the teaching office of the Church saw religious free-
dom as closely linked with the secularizing initiatives of the French rev-
olution, which sought to confine Christian faith to the sacristy. This ap-
proach would exclude the Church from any influence in social and
political life. Second, it was sometimes argued that religious freedom
should be protected because there is supposedly no way to know
whether any religious beliefs are actually true. This argument linked re-
ligious freedom with agnosticism and skepticism. Third, the modern
human-rights movement sometimes assumed a highly individualistic un-
derstanding of the person. It presumed that religious freedom, and
other human rights also, would be best defended by protecting individ-
ual privacy and leaving people alone. Such approaches to freedom were
and remain in tension or conflict with Catholic tradition.
Murray’s efforts to argue that the official Church’s position on re-
ligious freedom should be changed from opposition to support was
seen by some church officials in Rome as a capitulation to these secu-
larizing, skeptical, and individualistic tendencies in modern Western
culture. Thus in 1955, Murray was effectively forbidden to write fur-
ther on the issue of religious freedom. But just four years later Pope
John XXIII announced that he would convene the Second Vatican
Council, opening the way for the revival and ultimate triumph of Mur-
ray’s argument for religious freedom.
Use of Tradition in Arguing for Religious Freedom

Murray’s understanding of religious freedom drew deeply on
Catholic tradition while developing this tradition in new and creative
directions. Murray’s thinking had three dimensions.
John Courtney Murray 81
First, his argument was explicitly theological. He called this di-

mension of his position the “primacy of the spiritual.” The human per-
son is a spiritual being whose spirit reaches beyond all earthly realities
in its quest for meaning. Ultimately, this quest can be satisfied only by
union with God, and it can be attained only through a free act of faith.
As Augustine put it, “our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” The
transcendence of the human spirit must never be subordinated to the
control of earthly powers such as the government. The state is ulti-
mately incompetent to tell men and women how they should relate to
God. Efforts by a government to enforce religion would thus deny the
primacy of the spiritual over the political. To give such power to the
state would be to subordinate religious faith to politics. It would place
both the person’s relation to God and the Church itself under the
thumb of the state. Theologically, this is totally unacceptable and Mur-
ray argues for religious freedom by resisting this subordination.
Second, this theological stance has a direct political consequence.
It grounds Murray’s argument that the state is essentially limited in
power. In the long Catholic tradition, going back to the apostles’
statement that “we must obey God rather than any human authority”
(Acts 5:29, NRSV), to medieval investiture controversies in which the
popes resisted attempts by princes to appoint bishops, the Church has
stood firmly in opposition to unlimited state power. In Murray’s own
time this argument had particular force, for the Church was involved
in a sustained struggle with the totalitarian Soviet state. The limited
nature of the state is essential for the protection of the freedom of the
Church, and it has as a direct consequence the freedom of society from
any form of absolutist control by the government. This means that cit-
izens should be free from state control in their religious belief, which
grounds the civil right to religious freedom. Analogously, citizens
should also be free in other, broader ranges of their social life. Thus
Murray argued that religious freedom is linked with the full range of
civil and political rights that are guaranteed by constitutional democ-
racy. Religious freedom and human rights more generally are directly
linked with each other. This linkage has made the Church after Vati-
can II one of the strongest voices for human rights on the world stage
today. Murray’s use of the tradition in new circumstances helped make
this possible.
Finally, Murray’s approach had both ethical and juridical or legal
dimensions. Because the state is limited, its reach does not extend to
the promotion of the full common good that should be achieved in
society, but only to the most basic moral requirements of social life
82 DAVID HOLLENBACH, S.J.
that Murray called public order. Public order includes genuinely moral
values, such as public peace, justice, and those standards of public
morality on which consensus exists in society. These minimal moral
standards are the concern of the government. But working for the at-
tainment of the fullness of virtue and the totality of the common good
is the vocation of the Church, of families, and of the many educational
and cultural bodies that form civil society. The state’s moral role is
more limited: the protection of the basic requirements of peace, jus-
tice, and human rights that make life in society possible at all. Murray
appealed to St. Augustine’s argument that the state is unlikely to suc-
ceed in efforts to promote good sexual mores through the force of co-
ercive civil law. This is rather the task of the Church, the family, and
other communities in civil society that can more directly encourage
personal virtue. In the same way, it is the role of the Church and its
members— not the role of the state—to promote Christian faith and
a fruitful relation to God among the citizenry. Thus Murray provides
a moral and juridical argument for religious freedom.
Murray drew deeply on nearly two thousand years of Christian tra-
dition in making his argument for religious freedom. His work was
both profoundly traditional and dramatically innovative. He main-
tained that the most difficult question faced by the bishops assembled
at Vatican II was that of whether and how Christian doctrine could de-
velop and change. Through his scholarly retrieval of resources from
the tradition and his wise use of these resources to address the press-
ing problems facing the Church in his time, Murray showed the coun-
cil fathers that such development was possible and also how it could
occur in the domain of religious freedom. His interpretation of reli-
gious freedom rested neither on an individualistic understanding of
the human person nor on a view that religion is an essentially private
affair. Murray’s contribution, therefore, set the Church free to make
important contributions to justice and peace in society.
Continuing Challenges Today

The development of tradition to which Murray contributed has, of
course, not come to an end. After the council and shortly before he
died, Murray suggested that the understanding of freedom within the
Church’s own internal life was a matter in need of further investiga-
tion and development. This has surely proven to be the case, as the
Church has grappled with questions of morality and theology ranging
John Courtney Murray 83
from reproduction and sexuality, to women’s roles in the Church, to

the relation of Christian faith to other religions. Murray’s life work can
serve as a model for all who seek to grapple with these issues today.
His success in bringing about a development of the tradition is a sign
of hope in our own time, and can contribute to a deepening of con-
temporary faith as well.
Life and Major Work

Murray was born on September 12, 1904, in New York City. He
entered the Jesuit order in 1920 at the age of sixteen. He received his
BA from Weston College in 1926 and an MA from Boston College in
1927. He then taught Latin and English literature for three years at
the Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines. He studied theology at
Woodstock College in Maryland from 1930 to 1934, was ordained to
the priesthood on June 25, 1933, and went on to receive his doctor-
ate in theology from the Gregorian University in 1937. He returned
to teach theology at Woodstock, remaining a professor there until his
death in 1967. In 1941 he became editor of Theological Studies, and
he published many of his most influential articles in that journal. He
was also the religion editor of America magazine for many years. In
1955 he was told by his Jesuit superiors in Rome that it would not be
prudent for him to continue writing on the subject of religious free-
dom. In a dramatic reversal of this silencing, Murray was invited in
1963 to attend the Second Vatican Council as a theological advisor to
the bishops. He died August 16, 1967, less than two years after the
close of the council he had helped shape.
His best known book, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections
on the American Proposition, was first published in 1960 (it is still in
print today: Lanham, MD: 2005, Rowman and Littlefield), the same
year John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. The
overlap of these two events was doubtless the occasion for his appear-
ance on the cover of Time magazine that year. Other major contribu-
tions are in the collections of his articles edited by J. Leon Hooper,
Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism (Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) and Bridging the Sacred and the
Secular (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994).
17
Leonard Feeney
In Memoriam
CARDINAL AVERY DULLES, S.J.
With the death of Leonard Feeney, at the age of eighty, on Janu-

ary 30, 1978, the United States lost one of its most colorful, talented,
and devoted priests. The obituary notices, on the whole, tended to
overlook the brilliance of his career and to concentrate only on the
storm of doctrinal controversy associated with his name in the late
1940s and early 1950s.
I knew Father Feeney only slightly before the spring of 1946, at
which time I settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for several months
as I was completing my naval service and preparing to enter the Jesuit
novitiate in August. I went to Cambridge in order to rejoin St. Bene-
dict Center, a lively gathering place for Catholic students, which I had
been instrumental in founding, together with Catherine Goddard
Clarke, some five years earlier. Mrs. Clarke, a woman of charismatic
charm and contagious enthusiasm, had run the Center almost unas-
sisted until 1943, when she obtained the services of Leonard Feeney
as spiritual director. Father Feeney was then at the height of his
renown. As literary editor of America, he had become a prominent
As it appears here, Cardinal Dulles’s contribution is an edited version of a piece

(same title) he wrote on Father Leonard Feeney in America (February 25, 1978):
135–37.
84
Leonard Feeney 85
poet and essayist, much in demand on the lecture circuit. He had

preached on important occasions at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and had
broadcast a series of sermons on The Catholic Hour. But after arriving
in Cambridge he soon decided to make St. Benedict Center his single,
exclusive and full-time apostolate.
By the time I returned in February 1946, the Center was teeming
with activity. It was not simply a place where students could drop in
for a cup of tea or a friendly chat, but also a bustling center of theo-
logical study and apostolic zeal. Equipped with an excellent Catholic
library (with my own collection as part of the nucleus), the Center had
set up interest groups of various kinds, most of which met in the
evening on a weekly basis.
Thursday nights at St. Benedict Center were, in a special way, for
Father Feeney. He gave a carefully planned course of lectures, begin-
ning with the act of faith and then passing on to the sacraments. His
leading idea in these lectures seemed to be the integration of nature
and grace. Faith he viewed as a sacrifice in which the believer offers to
God the most excellent gift of reason. For the sacrifice to be meaning-
ful it was essential, in Father Feeney’s estimation, to have a proper es-
teem for the value of reason. In these lectures he therefore taught us
to love the senses, the imagination, the memory and all the faculties of
the mind. So, too, when he came to the sacraments, he labored to in-
still into his hearers a deep appreciation of the elements used in the
church’s rituals—water, oil, bread, wine and the like.
Not only was the doctrine solid; the oratory was superb. Never
have I known a speaker with such a sense of collective psychology. Fa-
ther Feeney would not come to his main point until he had satisfied
himself that every member of the audience was disposed to understand
and accept his message. With unbelievable vividness he would make
the gospel episodes come alive: scenes of the rich young man, of Zac-
chaeus in the sycamore tree, and countless others. When he quoted
from the letters of Paul, one had the impression that Paul himself was
speaking. To this day, I imagine St. Paul with the features and voice of
Leonard Feeney.
His main interest was in those who made the Center their princi-
pal occupation in life—those for whom it was a kind of family, school,
and parish all rolled into one. For this group Father Feeney would
make himself available every afternoon, hearing confessions and giving
personal direction. Later in the afternoon he would emerge for tea and
a social hour. Then at suppertime a group of us would generally pile
86 CARDINAL AVERY DULLES, S.J.
into Catherine Clarke’s decrepit sedan so that we could continue our

discussions over hamburgers in a restaurant. In the company of
Catherine Clarke and Leonard Feeney conversation was never known
to lag.
No Salvation outside the Church?

Were there, at the time I was present, any signs of the coming cat-
aclysm? I did notice, toward the end of my stay, that Leonard Feeney
was becoming increasingly polemical. His attacks on materialism,
skepticism, and agnosticism became sharper and more personal. He
used bitter invective against Hume and Kant, Marx and Freud. At
times he denounced the “liberal Catholics” who had failed to support
Generalissimo Franco. Even Jacques Maritain was in his eyes infected
by the poison of liberal culture. Father Feeney’s attitude toward the
Jews was ambivalent. He felt that they could not achieve their true vo-
cation except in Christ, but that when they accepted this vocation they
excelled all other Christians. In his lectures and conversation he made
us savor the total Jewishness of Mary, of Jesus, and of Paul. He used
to talk of a certain Jewish taxi driver in New York whom he had in-
structed in the faith and who had become, in Father Feeney’s judg-
ment, a true mystic.
On the question of salvation outside the church, Father Feeney
had not as yet adopted any clear position. He was convinced that
Catholics must not hesitate to present the full challenge of the gospel,
which for him included the whole system of official dogma. He felt
that too many tended, out of politeness and timidity, to evade the task
of forthright witness. As long as any person was alive, Father Feeney
used to say, we should urge the necessity of his accepting the fullness
of the faith. But after death, the situation was different. We could con-
fidently leave our loved ones to the unfathomable mercy of God, to
which we could set no limits. “I would infinitely rather be judged by
God,” Father Feeney would say, “than by my closest friend.” Hence
the damnation of non-Catholics was not at that stage, as I recall, any
part of the Feeney gospel.
How did Leonard Feeney later become a proponent of the rigid
and almost Jansenistic position attributed to St. Benedict Center? I
have no personal knowledge of what happened in the late 1940s. Per-
haps Father Feeney was somewhat embittered by his encounters with
the non-Catholic universities about him; perhaps he was fatigued by
Leonard Feeney 87
his arduous apostolate and overtaxed by his poor health; perhaps, also,
he was led into doctrinal exaggerations by his own mercurial poetic
temperament. Then again, he and others may have been somewhat in-
toxicated by the dramatic successes of the Center and too much iso-
lated from opinions coming from outside their own narrow circle. It
occurs to me also that the religious enthusiasm of some of Father
Feeney’s convert disciples may have led him further than he would
have gone on his own. He was ferociously loyal to his followers, espe-
cially those who had gone out on a limb to defend what they under-
stood as his own teaching. Thus, when several faculty members at
Boston College were dismissed for their teaching on salvation, he
backed them to the hilt. From that moment the developments leading
to Father Feeney’s excommunication and to the interdiction of the
Center were all but inevitable.
For those who loved and admired Father Feeney it was painful to
see illustrated newspaper articles about him on the Boston Common,
flanked by burly bodyguards, shouting vulgar anti-Semitisms at the
crowds before him. No doubt he did become angry and embittered in
the early 1950s, but happily this was only a passing phase. St. Benedict
Center, after it moved to Still River, Massachusetts, in January 1958,
became a different kind of community, more in keeping with the
Benedictine spirit to which Father Feeney himself had long been at-
tracted. Thus it became possible for the major portion of the commu-
nity, including Father Feeney himself, to be reconciled to the Catholic
Church in 1974. Two years later two members of this community
were ordained to the priesthood so that they could carry on Father
Feeney’s ministry to the “pious union of Benedictine Oblates” that
has sprung forth from the St. Benedict Center. It would have been
tragic if Leonard Feeney, the great apostle of salvation within the
Church, had died an excommunicate.
Cursum consummavi, fidem servavi (“I have finished my course; I
have kept the faith”): These words could serve as Leonard Feeney’s
epitaph. They express his overriding concern to resist any dilution of
the Christian faith and to pass it on entire, as a precious heritage, to
the generations yet to come. In an age of accommodation and uncer-
tainty, he went to extremes in order to avoid the very appearance of
compromise. With unstinting generosity he placed all his talents and
energies in the service of the faith as he saw it.
18
Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C.

Woman of Faith and Vision
GAIL PORTER MANDELL
In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, the

Roman Catholic Church and the educational system it supported of-
fered a way out of limited circumstances and up the social and eco-
nomic ladder for thousands of young men and women, many the
children of immigrants. One of them was Mary Evaline Wolff, who
grew up in a tiny logging town in northwest Wisconsin. At age
twenty-one, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy
Cross, and as Sister Madeleva became famous as a poet, essayist,
scholar, and educator.
During her long career, she published twenty books, including
thirteen volumes of religious poetry; founded a college for women
in Salt Lake City; and for twenty-seven years served as president of
Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. As noted in The New
York Times (July 27, 1964), two days after her death at age seventy-
seven, perhaps her greatest achievement was establishing the School
of Sacred Theology at Saint Mary’s, the first of its kind and, for more
than a decade, the only institution in which women or lay men could
earn advanced degrees in Catholic theology. The school prepared a
generation of women to take an active part in the intellectual life of
the Church.
88
Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C. 89
Discovering Catholic Culture
Born May 24, 1887, Eva, as she was called, grew up longing for sta-
tus and culture. August, her German-born father, was a harness-maker
whose formal education had ended with the third grade; Lucy, her
mother, a daughter of immigrants, was a farm girl who managed to earn
a high school diploma and taught in a country school for a few years be-
fore her marriage. Both of Eva’s parents stressed the importance of ed-
ucation not only for their two sons but also—unusual at the time—for
their only daughter, sending all three children to the University of Wis-
consin. When, after her first year there, Eva was accepted at Saint
Mary’s, a Catholic college for women, the entire family was thrilled, in
spite of the strain on their finances. A faith-based education at a convent
school run by a French order of nuns signified the height of gentility.
At Saint Mary’s, Eva became part of an expanding system of
Catholic education in the United States that extended from the earliest
grades through graduate school. Supported by religious congregations,
it was an educational system designed to promote orthodoxy of views
and practice. Required theology and philosophy courses focused on
Catholic doctrine, and strict rules enforced the moral teachings of the
Church. At its best, Catholic education imparted a shared view of the
world and a common frame of reference; at its worst, it demanded con-
formity at the cost of creativity and critical thinking. Strong-willed and
spirited, Eva resisted the rules, many of which she considered “rather
foolish.”1 Her education, however, opened unexpected worlds to her.
She discovered contemporary Catholic literature, avidly reading the po-
etry of Francis Thompson, Coventry Patmore, Alice Meynell, and
other representatives of the English Catholic Revival, and was soon
writing her own verse. Poetry became for her a form of prayer, an over-
flowing of her deepening spiritual life and an expression of an abiding
relationship with God first formed during these college years.
Like many Catholic girls’ schools at the time, Saint Mary’s was
literally and figuratively one step away from the convent. The college
shared its campus with the motherhouse of the Congregation, whose
members numbered at the time more than a thousand women in the
United States alone. Eva found a vibrant religious community of
women of all ages, passionately devoted to the service of God through
prayer and good works. In attending daily Mass and mandatory
90 GAIL PORTER MANDELL
college-wide retreats, Eva tasted the prayer and silent meditation of

convent life at its most rarefied. From her classmates at Saint Mary’s,
many from privileged backgrounds, she learned to speak, dress, and
comport herself as the lady she longed to be. But by the end of her
junior year, Eva knew that in spite of her “huge Merry Widow hat
and smart clothes,” her “absolute wish was to become a Sister of the
Holy Cross.”2
Soon after she joined the Holy Cross order and before she finished
her college degree, young Sister Madeleva was assigned to teach high-
school classes with only a day’s notice. Thanks to the vision of her re-
ligious superiors as well as her own initiative, Madeleva eventually ob-
tained a first-rate education, earning a master’s degree from the
University of Notre Dame and distinguishing herself as the first reli-
gious to receive a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley,
where she wrote a dissertation on medieval Christian literature. Dur-
ing a year’s sabbatical, she completed post-graduate work at Oxford,
studying with C. S. Lewis and J. R .R. Tolkien.
Realizing in retrospect that her own precipitate entry into her pro-
fessional life was the rule and not the exception among young nuns,
Madeleva instigated the Sister Formation Movement. Combating the
stereotype of sisters as uneducated, subservient handmaids, the Move-
ment worked to ensure the professional preparation and improve the
status of religious women in the Church. Throughout her life, Madel-
eva used her position and influence to help generations of young nuns
obtain educations similar in quality to her own.
Madeleva’s Vision for Catholic Education

As a scholar and an educator, Madeleva kept abreast of contempo-
rary culture (she drew criticism for encouraging young nuns to read Lord
of the Flies and Animal Farm as part of their spiritual formation), refus-
ing to draw a line between “secular” and “sacred.” She also drew regu-
larly on Christian tradition for inspiration and validation of her sometimes
controversial initiatives. “Our journey into the past is a journey into the
future,” she wrote.3 She revised the general education program at Saint
Mary’s, using the trivium of the medieval university as a model; the re-
sult was an interdisciplinary course that integrated the study of logic, lit-
erature, and composition. She added a major program in Christian cul-
ture that drew on the ideas of English historian Christopher Dawson,
who stressed the dynamic, formative role of medieval Christianity in the
Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C. 91
development of Western culture. In establishing the School of Sacred

Theology at St. Mary’s, Madeleva cited as precedent the ecclesiastical
leadership of seventh-century St. Hilda, abbess of Whitby.
In her return to the roots of Christian tradition, Madeleva’s inno-
vations were, by definition, radical; by adapting tradition to the needs
of contemporary women, Madeleva gave it a modern twist and re-
newed relevance. In her view, women educated with men in co-edu-
cational institutions were educated as men;4 when, however, women
were educated with and as women, their educations became their own,
made to their measure. Like others at the time, Madeleva stressed the
complementarities of males and females rather than their equality. She
nevertheless favored expanded roles for women in society and in the
Church, ironically using the past to justify these roles and the male hi-
erarchy of the church to effect them. This approach expressed itself
most obviously in her creation of the School of Sacred Theology.
In line with John Henry Cardinal Newman, Madeleva held that the
curriculum of the Catholic college should center on the study of theol-
ogy, as it had in the medieval university, and not on religious education,
the norm at the time. Because Catholic universities and seminaries re-
fused to admit lay people into their theology programs, nuns—who
taught most of the religion classes in Catholic schools—were denied
the academic preparation they needed. Demonstrating the wisdom of
working within a system, Madeleva engaged sympathetic priests and
bishops in the design of a graduate program in theology that the hier-
archy could approve. Formally established in 1944, the School granted
76 doctoral and 354 master’s degrees before it closed in 1970. Even
though the curriculum, mandated by Rome, guaranteed a conservative
approach, Madeleva understood that women learning theology with
and as women would inevitably change the discipline itself. Within a
few years, graduates of the school were teaching not only at Saint
Mary’s but in theology programs across the country.
A “One-World” Woman for Our Time

During her long tenure as president, Madeleva succeeded in mak-
ing Saint Mary’s a center of Catholic thought and culture. The times
supported her success. Catholic identity was strong and distinctive. Fa-
mous converts such as philosopher Jacques Maritain, writer and theolo-
gian Thomas Merton, and social activist Dorothy Day added substance
and excitement to the Catholic faith. Because most of the student body
92 GAIL PORTER MANDELL
had been educated in Catholic secondary schools, they arrived prepared

to appreciate the Christian art, music, and drama that Madeleva offered
them and the wider community. She used her extensive contacts and per-
sonal friendships to bring noted Catholic intellectuals, writers, artists, and
performers to campus, many as visiting scholars and artists in residence.
With an orientation she described as “one-world-mindedness,”
Madeleva also brought international students to campus from as many
as thirty-eight different countries at a time. If the college could not
fulfill the Christian obligation to go forth and teach all nations, she ex-
plained, Saint Mary’s must “bring all nations to us.”5 She justified
controversial decisions, such as the racial integration of the college in
1941, by calling on the authority of the gospels and finding priests to
back her up. Well before Vatican II, she spoke out in favor of ecu-
menism, stating, “I’m eliminating the word ‘Protestant’ from my vo-
cabulary because I believe we are all children of God.”6
Madeleva’s life illuminates a time when religious congregations
and the schools they sustained were among the glories of the Church.
She used her position as a spokesperson for Catholic education and a
proponent of Christian culture to combat the insularity of the Church
and growing secularism of her day. As an advocate for women’s edu-
cation, she inspires us to speak with and for the marginalized and dis-
enfranchised of our own time. Cherishing tradition without clinging
to it, she reminds us of the need of each era to interpret our heritage
anew. Her rise to leadership in her congregation shows the extent to
which the Church of her day not only attracted and supported but also
encouraged and lifted up ambitious women of vision and faith. So may
it always be and the Church be blessed in every generation by great
prophetic women like Sister Madeleva Wolff.
Notes
1. Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC, My First Seventy Years (New York:

The Macmillan Company, 1959), 28.
2. Ibid., 32–33.
3. Ibid., 137.
4. Ibid., 127.
5. Gail Porter Mandell, Madeleva: A Biography (Albany: State University
of New York, 1997), 172.
6. Ibid., 173.
19
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Communion with God through the Earth
JOHN F. HAUGHT
I first became acquainted with the writings of Pierre Teilhard de

Chardin (1881–1955) soon after graduating from college in 1964. I
was immediately swept away by the power and freshness of his
thought. At that time I was studying in a Catholic seminary which I
left soon afterwards in order to pursue a lay career in academic theol-
ogy. My decision to take up theological studies was also a consequence
of exposure to the writings of Karl Rahner, but, as I recall, it was
mostly due to the excitement I had felt in my very limited acquain-
tance with Teilhard and the direction in which he demonstrated that
creative Christian thought could move. A year after coming to
Georgetown University in 1969, I saw the need for a course in science
and religion which I taught to undergraduates for the next thirty-five
years. Throughout this time and afterwards, even though I have
sought intellectual support for relating theology to science in the work
of many other religious thinkers as well (especially Bernard Lonergan,
A. N. Whitehead and Michael Polanyi), Teilhard has been my main in-
spiration. I am not as uncritical of his thought as I may have been
when I was much younger, but I still draw upon the audacity of his ef-
forts to understand Christian faith in the context of evolution and his
conviction that acquaintance with science can help theology expand
and deepen our understanding of God. Here I want to point out that
93
94 JOHN F. HAUGHT
even before I came across his writings, his bold ideas were already in-
fluencing some of the theological reflection that would make Vatican
II such an important event in the history of the Church.
A Guide to Vatican II?

Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitu-
tion on the Church in the Modern World (1965) is revolutionary for
many reasons, not least for making the following two statements:
1. The human race has passed from a rather static concept of

reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence
there has arisen a new series of problems . . . calling for efforts
of analysis and synthesis. (§5)
2. A hope related to the end of time does not diminish the im-
portance of intervening duties but rather undergirds the ac-
quittal of them with fresh incentives. (§21)
It is hard to read these words without seeing in them some of Teil-

hard’s central ideas. Early in the twentieth century this controversial
Jesuit geologist and innovative religious thinker had already expressed
the very same sentiments as Gaudium et Spes—although more power-
fully and emphatically—developing his ideas in numerous unpublished
essays and in his major books, The Human Phenomenon and The Di-
vine Milieu. During his own lifetime the Vatican had prevented Teil-
hard from publishing his reflections on evolution and Christian faith.
In 1962 it even issued a monitum (admonition) about his writings to
seminary professors and university presidents to “protect the minds,
particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the works
of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers.” However, by 1965 Teil-
hard’s bold integration of Christianity and modern science had be-
come widely known and appreciated. And there can be little doubt
that among the experts who drafted Gaudium et Spes there were at
least some “followers” who had been exposed to Teilhard’s “danger-
ous” ideas either directly or indirectly.
Presumably it was Teilhard’s ideas on original sin that had seemed
especially alarming earlier in the twentieth century. However, the Vati-
can’s censoring of his work was motivated no less fundamentally by the
fact that church officials and theologians at the time were still distrust-
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 95
ful of evolution and the world-affirming religious ideas that Teilhard had
expressed. Until the council most bishops and catechists alike would
have found the two propositions excerpted above quite unsettling. And
yet, by 1965—a mere ten years after Teilhard’s death—the Church had
come to adopt Teilhard’s provocative claims as officially its own.
In order to appreciate Gaudium et Spes today, I believe it is essen-
tial to reflect seriously on Teilhard’s main themes—now more than
ever. Although chronologically the French Jesuit is pre-conciliar, in
thought and sentiment he is in most respects a decidedly post-concil-
iar interpreter of Christian faith. After Vatican II we have yet to catch
up with his revolutionary, nuanced, and deeply Christian synthesis of
science and faith. Hence contemporary Catholic thought, in order to
appropriate the theological reflection that lies behind the two passages
I have highlighted from Gaudium et Spes, would do well to examine
more closely than ever Teilhard’s earlier prescriptions for the renewal
of Christianity in a scientific and post-Darwinian age.
By and large, I believe, it has still failed to do so. And it does not
help matters that Pope Benedict XVI (along with his former student
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna) has undeniably given the
impression to many intellectuals that Catholicism these days is more
tentative, and at times even grudging, in its embrace of evolutionary
science than it was during the papacy of John Paul II. Nevertheless,
Vatican II itself provides a firm theological sanction for undertaking
the “analysis and synthesis” of what it means to be Catholic after Dar-
win and Einstein. Even now Teilhard’s thought remains a vital re-
source for a constructive theology of nature in keeping with the spirit
of both scientific discovery and the Second Vatican Council.
Christianity and the Unfinished Universe

According to Vatican II, the relatively recent migration of enlight-
ened human consciousness from a static concept of reality to a “dy-
namic” and “evolutionary” one requires fresh “efforts of analysis and
synthesis” on the part of Catholics, theologians, and the teaching
Church. A good place to begin this analysis and synthesis is to go back
and ask Teilhard what he meant when he made this same point, one
that seemed unacceptable early in the twentieth century but one that
Vatican II enthusiastically endorsed decades later.
To begin with, Teilhard would reply, a still evolving universe is
an unfinished creation. This observation alone is theologically and
96 JOHN F. HAUGHT
ethically momentous. It means that the world is still coming into

being, that the cosmos remains open to a future of ongoing creation
“up ahead.” The whole universe, along with earth and humanity, is
perishable, of course, but it may still have a rich future in the mean-
time. That the universe is still being created allows Christians to ob-
serve that something of great importance has been going on in the
universe since long before human beings arrived. And the hope that
creation may continue into the future has wholesome implications
for Christian ethics and eschatology, as the second excerpt suggests.
What then is going on in the universe, and why should Catholic
thought be concerned about it? Here, in a nutshell, is how Teilhard
would respond:
(a) Traditional Catholicism first came to expression at a time when

everyone understood the universe to be essentially static and unchang-
ing. As a result of modern science, however, Catholic thought today
needs to understand that the whole universe, not just terrestrial life and
human history, is in the process of becoming. Teilhard, I should note,
was one of the first scientists in the last century to have observed that
the entire cosmos—and not just the biological and human periods—is
a still-unfolding story. Theology needs to become fully awakened to
the fact that the universe is not just a stage for the human drama.
Human existence must now be reconnected to the larger narrative of
creation, as even St. Paul proposed (Romans 8:18–21) in Christian-
ity’s foundational phase.
The Pauline intuition, Teilhard would advise, must now be recon-
figured in accordance with our latest scientific understanding of the
world. Such theological reconstruction, I would argue, is what the
council is encouraging when it points to the need for new “efforts of
analysis and synthesis.” In this project Teilhard’s thought, in spite of
whatever imperfections it may have, is more vital today than ever.
(b) On our own planet the cosmic process has already brought about
the geosphere and the biosphere. So what’s going on now? Because of
developments in communication technology, commerce, engineering,
and global politics it appears that the earth is now gradually weaving
onto itself something like a brain, a “noosphere.” Teilhard did not live
to see the Internet, but his ideas clearly anticipated this and many
other developments in planetary complexity. It is an exciting develop-
ment in religious history that in Vatican II Catholic thought formally
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 97
acknowledges that people of faith must realize their own lives are part
of the ongoing, adventurous creation of the universe. The Christian
exhortation to faith, hope, and love, Teilhard would add, is a unifying
force essential to the future thriving of the earth and the universe that
enfolds it.
(c) There is a discernible direction to cosmic process. Although biolog-

ical evolution may seem at times to be a drunken stagger, the net move-
ment of the universe has been in the direction of more and more phys-
ical complexity. The process has passed from the relatively simpler
pre-atomic, atomic, and molecular stages to unicellular, multicellular,
vertebrate, primate, and human forms of life. Overall, the long cosmic
journey has come to expression in a measurable intensification of organ-
ized complexity. One can only wonder, then, where cosmic evolution
will now carry its mysterious tendency to ongoing complexification.
The emerging noosphere appears to be actualizing just such an ex-
pectation. As Teilhard realized, however, at the present stage of its
evolution the process is empty and doomed if it is not animated by
love and “a great hope held in common.” In this respect one of the
objectives of Catholic theology must be to elevate awareness of how
the life of faith, hope, and love can contribute to the ongoing creation
of “more being” in God’s universe.
(d) What does Teilhard mean by “more being”? During the course of
the world’s “evolution,” as matter has become more complex in its or-
ganization, consciousness and spirit have intensified in a correspond-
ingly impressive way. As visible matter has become more complex out-
wardly, the invisible “insideness” of things has become more vital,
centered, conscious, and free. And, having reached the level of human
consciousness, there is no reason to assume that this movement will
now be suspended. In fact the universe is still being invited to become
“more” by organizing itself inwardly and outwardly around an always
new and higher Center. This Center is the very God who in Christ has
become fully incarnate in the universe and who is still being clothed in
the folds of an emergent creation.
(e) The incarnation of God in Christ continues to stir up the world.

The entire cosmic story is even now being called irreversibly and ever-
lastingly into the embrace of God. This is the ultimate reason why
evolution, understood in both a cosmological and biological sense,
98 JOHN F. HAUGHT
takes place at all. Evolution now means that creation is still happen-
ing, and God is still creating the world, not a retro, from out of the
past, but ab ante, from up ahead. All things are still being brought to-
gether in the Christ who is coming. As a fervent devotee of St. Paul,
Teilhard suggests that what is really going on in cosmic process and
biological evolution is that the “whole of creation” is groaning for
the renewal wrought by God in Christ through the power of the
Holy Spirit (Romans 8:22).
What Then Should We Be Doing with Our Lives?

Life’s evolution and humanity’s religious quest are recent chapters
in the universe’s long journey into the mystery of God. Cosmologically
speaking, our religious hope is the blossoming of a persistent and age-
less cosmic anticipation, a conscious opening up of the world to the fu-
ture of creation. Through our hope and struggles the universe that
gave birth to us still reaches out toward its unifying Center and Goal.
In view of these considerations, then, our second excerpt from
Gaudium et Spes takes on a significance that would not have seemed
obvious in a pre-evolutionary age. “A hope related to the end of
time,” the council declares, “does not diminish the importance of in-
tervening duties but rather undergirds the acquittal of them with fresh
incentives.”
What does this mean? A Teilhardian interpretation would recog-
nize here a belated response by the Church to the modern accusation
that Christian hope is a kind of escapism that negates the value of ac-
tion in the world. Marxists and other secular critics had long com-
plained that the Church had failed to motivate people to participate
fully in what Teilhard refers to as “building the earth.” However, once
we realize that the universe is a work in progress, then genuinely
Christian hope orients our existence toward participation in the ongo-
ing work of creation. Our hope for final fulfillment is not a reason for
passivity here and now, but a “fresh incentive” to contribute our lives
and labor to the great work of bringing the whole world to fulfillment
in Christ.
20
Thomas Merton
Monk and Prophet for the World
THOMAS P. RAUSCH, S.J.
I first heard of Thomas Merton in 1959 when I was a freshman

in college. I knew little about monasticism, still less about the Trap-
pists, though I had heard something about the austerity of their lives.
Still, I was interested. I read The Seven Storey Mountain, and remem-
ber how I was gripped by his narrative as he gradually discerned what
he wanted to do with his life and began to move toward entering the
Trappist monastery at Gethsemani. I read more of Merton in the next
couple of years as I began my own formation as a Jesuit, though I re-
member thinking then that Merton seemed a little narrow; he wrote
as though the monastic way was the only way to holiness.
That impression began to change in the turbulent mid-sixties. In
the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and the countercultural
shifts that accompanied it—the hippy subculture with its celebration
of psychedelic drugs, the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement,
and energizing it all the controversy over the war in Viet Nam—I
began reading a very different Merton. This monk who had once cel-
ebrated his escape from the world had become engaged;1 everywhere
he was part of the conversation.
99
100 THOMAS P. RAUSCH, S.J.
The Monk
Who was this monk, Thomas Merton? The son of two artists who
died while he was still young, Merton grew up on both sides of the At-
lantic without stable relationships or a home to call his own. Brilliant
but unsettled, he was brought back by his guardian to New York in
disgrace after a wild year at Cambridge, which included fathering a
child out of wedlock. Merton completed his education at Columbia
University, became a Catholic in 1938, and entered the Trappist Order
at Gethsemani on December 10, 1941, three days after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.
Trappist life in those days was rigorous in the extreme and Geth-
semani was one of the strictest houses in the order. The monks rose at
2:00 AM for the first office of the day and returned to choir six more
times before Compline brought the day to a close. Life in the
monastery was Spartan and regimented. The diet was vegetarian; no
meat, fish, or eggs. The monks fasted during Advent and Lent. There
were no mirrors, no private rooms, no privacy, period. The monks
slept in their habits on straw mats in a common dormitory, each in a
curtained off area or “cubic.” Hygiene was primitive; they shaved once
a week and showers were rare. The monastery was unheated. The win-
ters were bitterly cold, the summers stifling. Incoming and outgoing
mail was read by the prior or novice master.2
But Merton flourished. He thought he had left his persona as a
writer behind him, but his abbot, Dom Frederick Dunne, encouraged
him to write. His famous autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain,
appeared in 1948 and quickly became a best-seller. In one single day,
ten thousand copies were ordered. Yet in it he complained about “this
shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister
. . . And the worst of it is, he has my superiors on his side.”3 If Mer-
ton’s early works were pious lives of the saints, celebrating the monas-
tic life he had discovered, and some poetry, he continued to grow and
to change. He came to recognize that he could become his true self
only by owning the writer that he was. And his contemplation opened
him up to the world beyond the monastery gates.
In a famous passage, he describes an experience in 1958 that
marked a significant transition in his life: “In Louisville, at the corner
of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was
Thomas Merton 101
suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those peo-
ple, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one
another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from
a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world,
the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.”4
The Contemplative Critic

In the years that followed, Merton’s writings reached out to em-
brace the world. Rejecting the duality of his earlier works, he began to
speak with a new voice. He wrote, “that I should be the contempo-
rary of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Viet Nam and the Watts riots are things
about which I was not first consulted. Yet they are also events in
which, whether I like it or not, I am deeply and personally involved.”5
In 1959 he wrote to Dorothy Day, who with Peter Maurin had
founded the Catholic Worker, beginning a long relationship that was
to lead to a number of articles expressing his anti-war stance and re-
sulting in his being silenced for several years by the abbot general.
When Pope John XXIII published his encyclical Pacem in Terris
(1963), stressing personal responsibility rather than blind obedience
to authority, Merton wrote the abbot general, saying, “It was a good
thing that Pope John didn’t have to get his encyclical through our
censors.”6 Besides the threat of nuclear war, the civil rights movement
and the struggle over the war in Viet Nam began increasingly to oc-
cupy Merton’s attention. He became an unofficial pastor to the
Catholic peace movement. When some suggested that he should leave
the monastery to become fully involved in the protest, he resisted,
though it cost him considerable anguish. As Michael Mott points out,
to have left Gethsemani to win the approval of his friends would have
been to give in to his false self that needed the approval of others.7
During and after the Second Vatican Council he wrote about the
renewal of religious life and helped move his own community forward.
The council had called religious to a twofold renewal: first, to a con-
tinuous return to the sources of Christian life and to the original in-
spiration of their institutes, and second, to adapt their religious life to
the changed conditions of the times (Perfectae Caritatis, 2). Having
served first as master of scholastics and then as master of novices for
more than ten years, Merton had considerable personal experience.
He observed that too many young religious entered the community
102 THOMAS P. RAUSCH, S.J.
with no sense of their own identity and thus found it difficult to live
authentic lives as religious. He insisted that monks should be open to
the world, not closed off from it, but as contemplatives rather than in
the way of active religious. He argued that the monastic life was about
discipleship, not religiosity and external observances, and thus the
style of monastic life needed to be rethought.8
As the Trappists sought to rediscover their original vocation as
contemplatives rather than as the penitential order they had become,
the outward form of their life began to change. They dispensed with
the traditional sign language and began to gather occasionally for
recreation. Silence was still valued, but as an aid to contemplation, not
an end in itself. They questioned the assumption that being a monk
generally meant being a priest and did away with the rigid separation
between choir monks and lay brothers. All the monks began to wear
the same white habit. At Gethsemani the chapel was renovated, strip-
ping away the faux gothic interior to uncover the original brick and re-
placing the church’s tall spire with a simple bell tower characteristic of
early Cistercian churches.
In many ways Merton was ahead of his Church. He had written
about the desperate situation of African Americans as early as 1948 in
The Seven Storey Mountain and published a number of essays in the
1960s addressing issues of black identity, the confusion of Christianity
with Americanism, and the co-opting of the Black Power movement
by sucking its leaders into government or academe.9 He insisted that
the way of non-violence must include an absolute refusal of evil, and
could not succeed if separated from the pursuit of truth. His love for
nature made him sensitive to ecological issues, and he questioned the
reliance on chemical fertilizers and insecticides used on the monastery
grounds after finding dead birds in the woods he so loved. The
Church did not begin to speak out on the environment until Pope
John Paul II’s 1987 encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. With Merton’s
remarkable capacity for friendship, he entered into correspondence
with representatives of other religions, beginning a dialogue that
would become increasingly important in the new century. Most of all,
he helped popularize the idea that contemplative prayer was not just
the preserve of monks and mystics; even if a gift of grace, it repre-
sented a deepening of faith to the point where our direct union with
God is realized and experienced.10
This marvelously human monk, who used to shout each morning
at the king snake who inhabited the outhouse near his hermitage, “Are
Thomas Merton 103
you in there, you bastard?” and who fell briefly in love with a young
nurse two years before his untimely death, was truly a “spiritual mas-
ter,” a teacher for the ages.11
Notes
1. Thomas Merton, “Is the World a Problem?” in Contemplation in a

World of Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998;
first published in 1971), 141.
2. See Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 208–10.
3. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Harcourt,
1998), 448–49.
4. Thomas Merton, “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York:
Doubleday, 1989; first published in 1968) 156
5. Merton, “Is the World a Problem,” 142.
6. Cited by Jim Forest, Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 146.
7. Mott, The Seven Mountains, 429.
8. See “The Monk in the Diaspora,” Blackfriars 45 (1964): 290–302;
“The Identity Crisis,” 58–83 and “Openness and Cloister,” 128–40 in Con-
templation in a World of Action.
9. See Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1968).
10. Contemplation in a World of Action, 157.
11. From Merton’s essay, “Day of a Stranger,” cited by Laurence S. Cun-
ningham in Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master (New York/Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist Press, 1992), 220.
21
Virgil Michel and Godfrey Diekmann

“Full, Active, and Conscious Participation”
MARY COLLINS, O.S.B.
Virgil Michel (1890–1938) and Godfrey Diekmann (1908–2002),

both monks of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, also had
in common their role as the first two editors of Orate Fratres, now
Worship, the premier journal of the North American liturgical move-
ment in both the pre- and post-Vatican II Council eras. The name of
each Benedictine monk has subsequently been memorialized to honor
their work. St. John’s University at Collegeville hosts the Virgil Michel
Ecumenical Chair in Rural Social Ministries. The North American
Academy of Liturgy established the Godfrey Diekmann Award at the
time of his death in 2002 to honor a significant national or interna-
tional contributor to the liturgical renewal sanctioned and promoted
by the 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Con-
cilium). The different slants in the memorial awards point to the dis-
tinct emphases in their academic backgrounds, interests, and even
their temperaments and life-spans.
Virgil Michel: Liturgy and Society

Michel’s scholarly interest was community and society and their
rapid disintegration in twentieth-century American culture. The interest
led him to the study of philosophy and social thought as well as theol-
104
Virgil Michel and Godfrey Diekmann 105
ogy. During a year allocated for academic work in Europe, Michel be-
came aware of the liturgical movement spreading through Benedictine
abbeys in Germany and Belgium and he found opportunities to meet its
leaders. The recurrent emphasis in Belgium on Pope Pius X’s vision that
a revitalized liturgy was the source of social and spiritual renewal spoke
to his own concerns. Upon his return to the United States he convinced
his abbot that St. John’s could spread the vision through education. The
Liturgical Press was established in Collegeville in 1926, with Michel as
the founding editor of Orate Fratres and the Liturgical Press.
Michel’s frequent writings consistently connect liturgical and so-
cial renewal, underlining the dignity of the community of the baptized
and their mission to contribute to social transformation through living
and promoting right relationships in society. This linking of liturgy
and life gave the pre-conciliar North American liturgical movement its
distinctive emphasis and its wide appeal to lay-based Catholic Action
groups. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, groups like the Catholic
Rural Life Movement and the Christian Family Movement grounded
their apostolic efforts in the belief that the liturgy was indeed the true
source of the Christian spirit.
Michel’s broad interests and his imaginative and competent edu-
cational leadership were both his gift and his burden. The Liturgical
Press responsibilities did not replace but accompanied his academic re-
sponsibilities as academic dean and professor at St. John’s College, and
overwork eventually led to a breakdown in his health. The respite min-
istry he took up while recovering led to three years of service within
the Catholic Chippewa Indian communities in northern Minnesota.
Upon his return to St. John’s, he resumed both his academic and ed-
itorial responsibilities with new energy. During this era, the young
Godfrey Diekmann was appointed his editorial assistant. Yet even with
help, Michel’s zealous commitment to many matters academic and ed-
itorial continued to wear down his health. He died in 1938 at the early
age of forty-eight, leaving behind a significant legacy in shaping the
pastoral liturgical movement and Catholic commitment to social re-
newal. Unfortunately, in his short life he was unable to articulate fully
his emerging theological vision.
Godfrey Diekmann: The Living Liturgical Tradition

Godfrey Diekmann’s academic interest was patristics, the study of
the early Christian writers of the first four or five centuries, most of
106 MARY COLLINS, O.S.B.
them bishops concerned with forming the young Church through

sacrament and the biblical word. This study provided the link that
grounded Diekmann in the liturgical, theological, and catechetical
movements at the time he succeeded Michel in 1938 and so became
responsible for editing Orate Frates. He remained in this post for the
next twenty-five years, while continuing to teach college theology, up
to the time preparations for the Second Vatican Council were unfold-
ing in Rome.
The young Diekmann, like Michel, had first met leaders of the Eu-
ropean liturgical movement in the 1930s while doing doctoral studies
in the German abbey of Maria Laach. That abbey was the home of sig-
nificant scholarly work on liturgy, including the publication of aca-
demic journals and books. Furthermore, Maria Laach was already
renowned as a site for pastoral liturgical reflection and the promotion
of the dialogue Mass with lay participation. There Diekmann wit-
nessed firsthand the linking of scholarship and pastoral liturgy and the
power of communal ritual to shape community identity.
As gregarious and spontaneous a personality as Michel had been
reserved and serious, Diekmann—a big man with a big personality—
became an inveterate public advocate of the pre-conciliar North Amer-
ican liturgical movement, successfully linking for laity and clergy alike
patristic theology and the pastoral concerns of the liturgical renewal.
He was also a beloved patristic professor at St. John’s University and
was often invited to lecture at many Catholic colleges and universities.
Diekmann was one of two American liturgists, the other being
Frederick McManus, who received an appointment early in the l960s
to the pre-conciliar preparatory group responsible for drafting the text
that would become The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vati-
can II. Diekmann continued as a consultant during the council and
was subsequently named to the post-conciliar body, the Consilium,
charged by Pope Paul VI with the implementation of the Constitution
on the Sacred Liturgy. As that work was in process, he was named a
member of the Advisory Committee to the newly forming Interna-
tional Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), the body estab-
lished to begin the work of translating the Latin liturgy into English.
Godfrey Diekmann loved the prayer of the Church, enjoyed trav-
eling to the early Christian sites of the Mediterranean world, thrived
in collaborative work with other liturgical scholars and pastoral lead-
ers, and never lost the early Collegeville integrative vision of a renewed
liturgy as the source of spiritual and social renewal. Godfrey Diek-
Virgil Michel and Godfrey Diekmann 107
mann’s work for liturgical renewal spanned almost five decades, en-
compassing the pre-conciliar, conciliar, and post-conciliar eras. In each
setting, his contribution consistently reflected his confidence in the
wisdom of the early Church Fathers of the East and West that word
and sacrament are the core of the Church’s life of faith.
The Centrality of the Worshiping Community

Both these monks of St. John’s Abbey, Virgil Michel and Godfrey
Diekmann, made notable and unique contributions to the twentieth-
century liturgical renewal in North America. Whether their insights
have lasting impact is for the future to assess. At the turn of the new
century, the vision of the magisterium for liturgical reform and re-
newal are focused elsewhere. Seventy years after Michel’s death, for ex-
ample, the centrality of the worshiping community as the place for
both ecclesial renewal and social transformation and the catechesis to
support this understanding of liturgy are receiving only modest atten-
tion from church leaders in North America. The magisterium, reflect-
ing the concern voiced by Pope Benedict XVI, expresses fear that the
post-conciliar implementation of The Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy has become earth-bound, horizontal in its orientation toward
the affirmation of human and ecclesial community and disconnected
from the transcendent mystery of Christ at the heart of liturgical cel-
ebration. Yet a careful reading of Michel’s theology shows that his un-
derstanding of the mystery of Baptism as the source of the Christian
life undergirded his confidence that the transformative power of the
Holy Spirit was always already at work in every worshiping assembly.
Good liturgy and good preaching would nurture what God had begun
and would sustain.
Michel’s early theological vision of the mystery of Baptism finds
explicit expression in chapter one of the Constitution, most clearly in
its declaration that full and active participation in the liturgy is the
laity’s the right and duty by reason of their Baptism (Sacrosanctum
Concilium, 14) and that vital liturgical celebration is both source and
summit of the Christian life (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10). Magiste-
rial leadership in the fifth decade after the council has refocused at-
tention on other matters. First is the doctrinal integrity of translated
text, rising from fear that less-than-literal translation of traditional
liturgical texts from Latin into English will jeopardize the Catholic
laity’s accurate understanding of the Church’s tradition of eucharistic
108 MARY COLLINS, O.S.B.
and sacramental theology. Second is the concern for a sacramental

theology that corrects a perceived North Atlantic ecclesial imbalance
emphasizing immanence more than the transcendence of grace in the
Church’s liturgical celebrations and its life.
The way forward in continuing liturgical reform and ecclesial and
social renewal perhaps lies in the advance of an integrative liturgical the-
ology, one able to explicate more fully both the nascent vision of Virgil
Michel in the 1920s about the transformative power of a Catholic litur-
gical spirituality and Godfrey Diekmann’s confidence in the spiritual
wisdom of the early bishops, East and West. Revitalized homiletics and
a renewed adult liturgical catechesis are needed to transform the reli-
gious imagination of Catholic people now living in a secularizing and
globalizing world, just as the early Church Fathers were able to give a
vision of a grace-filled world to their contemporaries.
I remember well a day trip I made with Godfrey and a New York
priest from a Rome meeting to Assisi. After arriving, we began climb-
ing the steep road up to Francis’s hillside retreat, climbing because
Godfrey said it would be wrong to take a cab if we were making a pil-
grimage (although he had already had one heart attack.) To motivate
us, he told how he had learned from his fellow Swiss students at Maria
Laach years earlier that the way to climb was to keep going a step at a
time, a step at a time. It was warm; we took our jackets off, but we
were moving a step at a time. Suddenly Godfrey declared, “To hell
with the Swiss! Let’s sit down!” So we did.
If the liturgical movement has been anything, it has been a pilgrim-
age to more full, conscious, and active participation. This has required
that persons like Godfrey Diekman and Virgil Michel, who despite re-
sistance and difficulties, go “a step at a time.” But the story also sug-
gests that, when we need to do so for the long journey of liturgical re-
newal, we should sit down and rest up for the work that still remains.
Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement by Paul Marx, O.S.B.
(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1957) provides a full-length
narrative of its subject, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of
Michel’s published works. Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., narrates Diek-
mann’s liturgical journey in The Monk’s Tale: A Biography of Godfrey
Diekmann, O.S.B. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991). It in-
cludes both a bibliography of his writing and a twenty-three page ap-
pendix on honors and awards conferred on him.
22
Fulton J. Sheen
“The Man with Hypnotic Eyes”
MARK MASSA, S.J.
If a random sample of U.S. citizens between 1952 and 1957 were

asked to name one American Catholic they had heard of, a good bet
would be that they would name Bishop Fulton Sheen. This man was,
far and away, the most visible and most respected popularizer of Roman
Catholic thought and practice in a culture in which Catholics still
thought of themselves as “outsiders.” Sheen’s show, Life Is Worth Liv-
ing, was the first mass-marketed religious program in the relatively new
medium of television, and Sheen used that medium to bring sophisti-
cated theological and philosophical concepts into the living rooms of
millions of Americans every week. The American Research Bureau es-
timates that at the height of his popularity in the mid-1950s, Sheen’s
audience rating was 23.7—the highest ever recorded for anyone on TV
in those pioneering years of television. Stories abounded at the time
(and since) of New York cabbies leaving their motors running outside
bars to run in and see as much of the program as they could without
being ticketed, and of Jewish housewives handing over their children to
babysitters so as not to be distracted from the “man with hypnotic
eyes.” In a real sense, Sheen invented the category of the “religious
media superstar” decades before the phenomenon of televangelists at
the end of the twentieth century. And Sheen remains, even today, the
most successful exemplar of blending show business savvy with serious
content in a primetime media context.1
109
110 MARK MASSA, S.J.
With the Help of Angels
Sheen’s immense success on TV was not a foregone conclusion by

any means: he was scheduled in the “obituary slot” at 8 PM on Tues-
day nights, opposite the hugely popular shows of “Uncle Miltie” (Mil-
ton Berle) and Frank Sinatra. For Sheen’s opening show in a medium
still new enough to cause general cultural excitement, the Adelphi
Theater on 54th Street just off Broadway in New York City was be-
sieged with many times the number of ticket requests than could be
granted for its eleven hundred seats. The stage of the theater had been
arranged to resemble a study, filled with books, and the only props
were a statue of the Virgin Mary (soon to be christened “Our Lady of
Television”) and a blackboard that would serve as the site of the
longest running gag on television during the 1950s: after Sheen had
written on the board, the camera would then focus on his figure, while
a stage hand (whom Sheen always referred to as “my little angle”)
erased the board for the next part of the “lesson.” Even after dozens
of shows, Sheen’s remark about his angelic help always elicited laugh-
ter from his audience.2
Sheen offered rapt audiences twenty-eight minute presentations
before with titles like “Science, Relativity, and the Atomic Bomb,” and
“The Philosophy of Communism”—presentations that were ecumeni-
cal and non-dogmatic but unmistakably theological in character. While
the titles and subject matter of Sheen’s “lectures” might sound too in-
tellectual to appeal to a wide prime-time audience, Sheen played his
part broadly: he mixed serious scholastic philosophy with old shoe
jokes and sight-gags on his blackboard, always punctuating his com-
ments with references to his “little angel.” Sheen’s famous sign-off at
the end of every telecast—“God love you”—would be heard for five
seasons at the very beginning of television’s national presence in
American homes, and became an iconic byline for the “most widely
viewed religious series in TV history.”3
Perhaps his single most famous broadcast—certainly the one that
drew the most press attention—was aired on February 24, 1953 and
entitled “The Death of Stalin.” Sheen delivered a hair-raising reading
of the burial scene from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with the
names of Caesar, Cassius, Marc Antony, and Brutus replaced with the
names of Stalin, Beria, Malenkov, and Vishinsky. “Stalin must one day
come to judgment” Sheen intoned to a mesmerized audience at the
Fulton J. Sheen 111
height of Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade, “and

Stalin’s spirit, ranging for revenge . . . shall come hot from hell, and
shall cry “Havoc!’” Several days later the Soviet dictator suffered a
sudden stroke, and died a little over a week later, on March 5, 1953.
Sheen’s performance made front-page news across the nation in re-
ports of the Russian leader’s death.4
A Catholic Superstar
Pundits at the time noted the surprising irony that a Catholic
bishop and scholastic philosopher, with no other props than a black-
board and a statue of the Virgin Mary, seemed to be just what Amer-
ica needed between 1952 and 1957. But many American Catholics
were eager to interpret Sheen’s popularity as evidence of a long-over-
due acceptance of their own religious tradition by their fellow citizens
as not only “respectable,” but as offering important insights for all
Americans, regardless of religious affiliation. This was something new
and culturally significant in a nation where anti-Catholicism was la-
beled “America’s oldest prejudice.”5
Unlike media religious personalities both then and now, Sheen was
a well-educated scholar who brought considerable learning and a criti-
cal mind to his TV programs. Having earned doctorates in philosophy
at the Catholic University of America in 1920, and at Belgium’s Uni-
versity of Louvain (at which he was awarded the prestigious Mercier
Prize for his dissertation, the first American ever so honored) in 1925,
Sheen returned to teach philosophy at the Catholic University of Amer-
ica for twenty years before beginning his television career. His first
scholarly book, entitled God and Intelligence, was an extended Catholic
answer to the philosophical agnosticism of John Dewey, and much of
his scholarly output before 1952 constituted a Catholic response to the
perceived threat of Freudian psychoanalysis and to the soft religion of
what would become known as “peace of mind” theology, popularized
by Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking.6
But, despite his impressive academic credentials, Sheen was hardly
a stranger to publicity or to popular success before the premiere of his
TV show. Sheen was already a celebrity “convert maker” by 1952, hav-
ing brought into the Catholic Church the likes of Congresswoman
and author-playwright Claire Booth Luce (wife of Time/Life mogul
Henry Luce) and motor scion Henry Ford II. Further, Sheen had al-
ready achieved national media attention well before 1952 on The
Catholic Hour, a radio program that began in 1930 and was broadcast
every Sunday evening at 6 PM. For over two decades, Sheen’s voice
could be heard in homes across the land on Sunday nights, making
him perhaps the most famous preacher in the U.S., certainly the best
known Catholic priest. Requests for transcripts of his radio talks be-
spoke an immense radio audience that listened to him, and more than
30 percent of the mail his radio broadcasts generated came from non-
Catholics. Sheen would later reminisce that the most satisfying
achievement of his radio career was both the improved image and rep-
utation of the Catholic Church and the greater religious understanding
between Protestants, Jews, and Catholics that it helped to foster. In
recognition of his important role in representing Catholicism in the
United States, Father Sheen was named a “Monsignor” in 1934 and
consecrated auxiliary bishop of New York in 1951. Evangelist Billy
Graham—himself no slouch on such matters—had by that time already
dubbed him “one of the great preachers of our century.”7
Public Catholicism
While Sheen’s radio and television programs were clearly designed
to be both entertaining and broadly ecumenical in tone, there re-
mained something high toned and distinctly Catholic in them that
separated Sheen’s presentations from both Billy Graham’s folksy style
of evangelical revivalism, and Norman Vincent Peale’s vague mix of
psychology and spirituality widely dubbed “mind cure.” Perhaps the
best way to describe Sheen’s media style is to apply to him David
O’Brien’s famous phrase of “Public Catholicism”—a resolutely social
and corporate faith in which faith and reason were complementary and
mutually-enforcing, so that “Catholic” philosophy and theology could
appeal to everyone’s common sense and reason, regardless of personal
religious faith. Sheen offered a (rare) overt recognition of St. Thomas
Aquinas, whose philosophy provided the intellectual groundwork for
Sheen’s radio and TV career, as it did for the entire intellectual enter-
prise of his style of pre-Vatican II Catholicism: “His works represent
the greatest masterpiece in the realm of philosophy. His gigantic pow-
ers of intellect naturally led him to God. His first principle was: you
cannot begin religion with faith; there must be a reason for faith, and
a motive for belief.”8
Sheen’s own version of Catholic philosophy and theology—heav-
ily dependent on St. Thomas and his modern interpreters—was re-
Fulton J. Sheen 113
placed with newer approaches to the Catholic tradition of Christianity

after reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the United States after
1965. To that extent, the explicit theological and philosophical con-
tent of Sheen’s presentations on both radio and television now appear
dated, and even old-fashioned. But Sheen’s style of “Public Catholi-
cism” set the benchmark for best practice by a religious media person-
ality in the United States. In a real sense no media evangelist, either
Catholic or Protestant, in the half century since his final TV show has
come close to Sheen’s broadly ecumenical appeal, his theological so-
phistication, and his optimistic trust that everyone in his audience,
even the most theologically illiterate, would welcome presentations of
sophisticated and timely religious ideas in clear and accessible ways.
Surely our own time also would be well served by such convictions and
good practice.
Peter John Sheen was born in El Paso City, Illinois, on May 8,
1895, and took his mother’s maiden name (“Fulton ”) only later in his
life. He was educated at St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota and ordained
a priest on September 20, 1919. After his graduate education in both
the United States and Europe, he was invited back to the Catholic
University of America, where he wrote the first of seventy-three books
produced during his academic and pastoral career. He served as auxil-
iary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York from 1951 until 1965,
and in 1966 was consecrated bishop of the diocese of Rochester, New
York, which he served for three years. Sheen died on December 9,
1979, and is buried in the crypt of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York
City. His most important works are: The Eternal Galilean (New York:
Popular Library, 1954 [1934]), Life of Christ (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1958), Peace of Soul (London: Burns and Oates, 1962 [1958])
and Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).
Notes
1. “Microphone Missionary,” Time (April 14, 1952): 72. Tim Brooks

and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows
(New York: Ballantine, 1992), 512. Kathleen Riley Fields, “Bishop Fulton J.
Sheen: An American Catholic Response to the Twentieth Century” (PhD dis-
sertation, University of Notre Dame, 1988), 113–23.
2. “Microphone Missionary,” 72.
3. For a sampling of the broadly theological but nonsectarian nature of

his television broadcasts, see Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living: First Series
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), “Science, Relativity and the Atomic
Bomb,” chapter 3, 19ff.; “The Philosophy of Communism,” chapter 7, 62ff.
All five seasons of the TV show were recorded, transcribed, and subsequeently
published by McGraw-Hill as Life Is Worth Living, First through Fifth Series.
For “the most widely viewed,” see: Gretta Palmer, “Bishop Sheen on Televi-
sion,” Catholic Digest 17 (February 1953): 75–81, 75.
4. “The Death of Stalin,” chapter 15, 157ff., in Life Is Worth Living,
First Series. See also Brooks and Marsh, The Complete Directory, 512.
5. For various interpretations of the cultural meanings of Sheen’s popu-
larity, see Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: Religion as Pop Psychology from
Mary Baker Eddy to Oral Roberts (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 332ff.;
William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1979), 186ff.; Martin Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own
Land (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), 414ff.
6. On Sheen’s education, see: D. E. Noonan, Missionary with a Mike: The
Bishop Sheen Story (New York: Pageant Press, 1968), 4–6. For examples of
Sheen’s disdain for the kind of “peace of mind” theology popularized by Nor-
man Vincent Peale, see Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1949), 7, 20, 69ff.
7. Fields, “Bishop Fulton J. Sheen,” 113–23. Billy Graham quote in Jay
Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1985), 393.
8. Val Adams, “The Bishop Looks at Television,” New York Times (April
6, 1952). David O’Brien, Public Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1985).
Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living, Second Series (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1954), 153–54.
23
John Tracy Ellis

Historian and Priest
THOMAS J. SHELLEY
When Vatican II ended in 1965, Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, the

leading historian of American Catholicism, was sixty years old, an age
at which people do not readily change long-held convictions. Ellis
lived another twenty-seven years and told an interviewer in 1989: “I
have read about revolutions, taught about revolutions, but I never
thought that I was going to live through one.” He told the same in-
terviewer that the Catholic Church in the United States was experi-
encing the most serious decline in its two-hundred year history.1
Despite this somber assessment of the state of the American
Catholic Church a quarter-century after Vatican II, Ellis never wa-
vered in his belief that Pope John XXIII’s decision to convene the
council was providential. Although he declined an invitation from
Bishop Robert Tracy of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to serve as a peritus
and told Thomas Merton in 1961 that he expected little to come from
the council, he followed the proceedings of Vatican II closely. His ini-
tial skepticism quickly turned to delight as he witnessed the bishops as-
sert their independence of the Roman Curia during the first weeks of
the opening session.
Ellis welcomed the results of the council, especially the introduction
of a vernacular liturgy, the replacement of a desiccated neo-scholasticism
with a more biblically oriented theology, the effort to reverse a century
115
116 THOMAS J. SHELLEY
of relentless Roman centralization with a more collegial ecclesiology,

and the attempt to open a dialogue with the modern world. The son of
a devout Catholic mother and a non-practicing Methodist father, Ellis
was gratified at the positive attitude of the council toward Protestant
and Eastern Orthodox Christians. As an American Catholic he was
proud of the role played by the American hierarchy and Father John
Courtney Murray, S.J., in securing the approval of the Declaration on
Religious Freedom. He hailed it as “a vindication of what had been the
accepted American practice from the nation’s earliest years.” “In other
words,” he said, “an ecumenical council has put its seal of approval on
the only system that American Catholics have ever known.”2
Vatican II: Taking the Historians’ Long View

The disarray and confusion that surfaced even before the conclu-
sion of the council disturbed Ellis greatly. He voiced his concern at the
questioning of the most fundamental Christian doctrines, the decline
in Mass attendance in the United States, the departure from the min-
istry of large numbers of priests and religious, and the catastrophic de-
cline in vocations. By 1968 he was speaking of a revolutionary crisis in
the Church and two years later said that the American Catholic
Church was passing through its darkest hour. However, unlike many
of his contemporaries, Ellis did not become a “prophet of gloom and
doom.” He never regretted the work of the council or sought refuge
in a nostalgic yearning for a return to the pre-Vatican II Church. He
consistently displayed a critical but favorable attitude to the winds of
change that the council had let loose in the Church. He liked to quote
his favorite author, John Henry Newman, to the effect that “to live is
to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Ellis viewed the tumultuous decades that followed the council
from the twin perspectives of a professional historian and a devout
priest. As a historian he emphasized the necessity of situating the
council within the context of the cultural upheavals that erupted vir-
tually everywhere in Western society in the 1960s and 1970s, with the
questioning of all authority accompanied by a revolution in sexual
mores and a widening generation gap. “The Church can’t help but be
affected by it,” he said. “She doesn’t exist on Mars. She exists here.”
In the United States the situation was further exacerbated by the Viet-
nam War, the resistance to the civil rights movement, and the Water-
gate scandal.
John Tracy Ellis 117
As a church historian Ellis also attempted to place Vatican II within

the context of the Church’s long history and noted that ecumenical
councils were often followed by periods of contentiousness and recrim-
ination. In a series of lectures and articles he reminded American
Catholics that the history of the Church had been characterized by re-
curring cycles of achievement, decline, and renewal. “Mater Ecclesia has
been here before and she has seen and endured worse,” he told a friend
in 1968. “It is not the most positive of arguments for the aggiorna-
mento,” he added wryly, “but it helps to steady one’s nerves.”3
The ideological polarization and the hardening of positions that
occurred among American Catholics in the wake of the council were
deeply disturbing to Ellis. It cost him the friendship of two of his
closest priest friends, who broke their ties with him because they re-
garded his advocacy of reform as a disservice to the Church. “A
plague on both your houses,” Ellis said more than once with refer-
ence to the extremists on both the right and the left. He regretted the
loss of civility and charity among Catholics as they debated their dif-
ferences. “Somewhere out there lies a via media, vague as it may be,”
he said wistfully, “and it is that via media that all of us, I think, must
keep in mind.”4
Ellis tried to practice what he preached with regard to theologians
who questioned aspects of church teaching. “I would not agree with
those who contend that a theologian should be judged solely by his
peers and not by the magisterium,” he told an English Catholic friend.
“But I would hope and pray,” he added, “that those who speak in the
name of the magisterium would observe the accepted norms of proce-
dure meant to protect individual human rights.” Ellis sympathized
with Edward Schillebeeckx but not with Hans Küng, who, he
thought, had publicly defied the Holy See. With regard to the travails
of his friend and colleague, Charles Curran, Ellis mused about the
contrast between the Catholic University of America in the 1980s and
the Catholic University of Louvain in the 1840s when the archbishop
of Malines told the papal nuncio to bring his complaints about the
university to him and not to Rome. Ellis often thought of his alma
mater as a Louvain manqué.5
One of Ellis’greatest fears was that Paul VI and John Paul II
would react to the crisis in the Church with a series of harsh condem-
nations like Mirari Vos, the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi, and Humani
Generis. For him, reform, not reaction, was the appropriate response
to a revolutionary situation. He quoted with approval the statement of
118 THOMAS J. SHELLEY
the Council of Latin American Bishops in July 1968 at Medellin that

“the alternatives are not the status quo and change; rather they are vi-
olent change and peaceful change.” Ellis added: “We are passing
through a revolution that will force change whether we like it or not,
and ecclesiastical history will not be kind to churchmen of whatever
rank who do not show themselves sensitive to what is transpiring be-
fore their eyes.”6
Although Ellis applauded the role of the American bishops at Vat-
ican II, especially their support of religious freedom, he was disap-
pointed at their hesitant and uncertain leadership in guiding the
American Church through the post-conciliar period. He faulted them
for their “lack of spiritual and intellectual gifts that the leadership of
others demands in the community that is the Church.” He went on
to note that “in the case of most of these ecclesiastical personalities,
theirs was an education that deadened initiative by its insistence on
the routine of traditional procedures, and what is sadder to relate, a
disconcertingly large number of them found in this pattern the com-
fort that is an accompaniment of conformity for mediocre or fretful
minds.”7
Keeping Hope Alive

Ellis detected a considerable improvement in the American hierar-
chy after the appointment of Archbishop Jean Jadot as the apostolic
delegate to the United States in 1973. As for himself, he was aware
that both Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle of Washington and Archbishop
Joseph McGucken of San Francisco (where Ellis lived for twelve years
while teaching at the Jesuit University of San Francisco) were uneasy
about his presence in their dioceses. During a semester that Ellis spent
in Rome in 1975 teaching at the North American College, he quipped
that at last he had found a bishop who did not seem to be uncomfort-
able with his presence in his diocese.
American Catholic intellectual life was a lifelong concern for Ellis.
A decade before the council, his article in Thought, “American
Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” caused a greater stir than his two-
volume biography of Cardinal James Gibbons. When a number of
Catholic colleges severed their ties with the Church after Vatican II,
Ellis expressed little regret because he had long regarded the prolifer-
ation of small and academically weak Catholic colleges as a major rea-
son for the lack of excellence in Catholic higher education.
John Tracy Ellis 119
Seminary education was another recurring theme in Ellis’s writ-

ing. When he was told that more attention would be given to the pas-
toral formation of seminarians after the council, he reacted warily at
the thought of how this might work out in practice. “They’ll not be
effective in the pastoral if they don’t have something in their heads,”
he replied. “When you downgrade the intellectual, then the pastoral
ministry suffers.”8
One would get an incomplete picture of Ellis’s reaction to Vati-
can II if one failed to take into account the fact that he viewed the
council from the perspective of a devout priest as well as a historian.
Although he was critical of the anti-intellectualism that pervaded his
own seminary education, he was always grateful to the Sulpicians for
the spiritual formation that he received at Divinity College (now The-
ological College) in Washington. To his dying day he was faithful to
a daily routine of Mass, meditation, breviary, Rosary, and Stations of
the Cross. When he spoke about Christ’s promise to remain with his
Church always, it was not pious boilerplate, but the expression of his
own deeply held convictions. He was writing both as a historian and
as a man of faith when he reminded American Catholics during the
post-conciliar troubles that the religious revivals of the eleventh, six-
teenth, and nineteenth centuries were “born out of the Church’s
tragedies in a way that could only suggest a mystery in her endurance,
a survival that necessarily posited a hidden power over it all.” 9
Notes
1. The Catholic Standard, March 2, 1989.

2. John Tracy Ellis, “Contemporary American Catholicism in the Light
of History,” The Critic 24 (June–July 1966): 11–12.
3. Archives of the Catholic University of America: John Tracy Ellis Pa-
pers (hereafter ACUA: JTEP), Ellis to George A. Kelly, April 27, 1968.
4. ACUA: JTEP, Ellis to Kelly, October 21, 1976.
5. ACUA: JTEP, Ellis to Norman St. John-Stevas, January 8, 1980.
6. John Tracy Ellis, “Whence Did They Come, These Uncertain Priests
of the 1960s,” American Ecclesiastical Review 162 (1970): 146, 157–58.
7. John Tracy Ellis, “The Church in Revolt: The Tumultuous Sixties,”
The Critic 28 (January–February 1970): 18.
8. The Mountain Echo, March 3, 1977.
9. John Tracy Ellis, “The Future: Does It Need A Prologue?” Catholic
World (October 1971): 26.
24
Father Charles E. Coughlin

“The Radio Priest”
MARY CHRISTINE ATHANS, B.V.M.
I never recall hearing Father Coughlin on the radio. I was quite

young during the years when he was broadcasting. What I do remem-
ber is that my Irish grandmother adored him. “Ah, sure—if he’s a
good Irish Catholic priest, what he’s sayin’ can’t be all that wrong!”
My father, who had come from Greece at the age of fifteen, felt very
differently. He would reply, quietly: “The dirty bum!” I knew that this
radio priest was very controversial, but it wasn’t until years later that I
had the opportunity to explore his life, his personality, his theology,
and his politics.
It has been said that in the 1930s and the early 1940s the only
voice more recognizable on the radio than that of Father Charles E.
Coughlin was that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. People remem-
ber that you could walk down the street on a hot summer Sunday af-
ternoon when all the windows were open in many a city—large or
small—and never miss a word of his broadcast. Every radio in the
neighborhood was tuned to his program. In the early Depression his
voice inspired hope.
Who was this Catholic priest who burst upon the scene in the late
1920s? Charles Edward Coughlin was born on October 25, 1891, in
Ontario, Canada, the only child of parents of Irish ancestry. He stud-
ied at St. Michael’s College, Toronto, joined the Basilian Congrega-
120
Father Charles E. Coughlin 121
tion, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1916. He taught at As-

sumption College in Windsor, Ontario and frequently served in
parishes in Detroit, Michigan, on weekends. Because of changes in the
Basilian Congregation in Canada, he left the Basilians in 1923 and was
incardinated into the Diocese of Detroit. In 1926, Bishop Michael J.
Gallagher asked him to build a new parish to be named for the recently
canonized Thérèse of Lisieux, known affectionately as “the Little
Flower,” in an obscure suburb of Detroit known as Royal Oak. To
raise funds, Coughlin negotiated his first radio program which aired
on October 17, 1926 over WJR in Detroit.
Coughlin’s style of sermonizing changed with the Depression.
He spoke more of sociopolitical issues and the frustrations of the
people. He became an “authority” on communism and monetary is-
sues. By 1930 CBS had picked up his program nationally and he had
an estimated forty million listeners. Short-wave radio from Philadel-
phia carried his voice all over the world on The Golden Hour of the
Little Flower. A devotee of Franklin Roosevelt, Coughlin became in-
volved in the 1932 presidential campaign and coined expressions
such as “The New Deal is Christ’s Deal” and “Roosevelt or Ruin.”
After the election, however, President Roosevelt did not look to
Coughlin for advice. Rejected, Coughlin became a rabid anti–New
Dealer.
Crossing the Church/State Divide

In 1934, Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice,
and in 1936 he started publishing his weekly newspaper, Social Justice.
Deciding that it was imperative to oppose Roosevelt in the 1936 cam-
paign, he joined with Gerald L. K. Smith (a Protestant minister and
heir apparent to the recently assassinated Huey Long), and Dr. Fran-
cis P. Townsend (a physician and founder of a program for the elderly
in California), to form the Union Party. They chose two colorless fig-
ures, Congressman William Lemke of North Dakota and Thomas
O’Brien, district attorney of Boston, as their presidential and vice-
presidential candidates. The campaign was dominated by Coughlin
and Smith. At one point Coughlin overextended his theatrics, ripped
off his Roman collar, and called FDR a liar and a betrayer. The Vati-
can was disturbed by this, but Bishop Gallagher supported Coughlin
to the end. Roosevelt won by a landslide and Coughlin retired tem-
porarily from the radio and public life. Despite complications with the
122 MARY CHRISTINE ATHANS, B.V.M.
Vatican, Coughlin’s supporters pleaded that he be allowed to return to

the radio and he did so in 1938.
Promoting Anti-Semitism and Hitler?

In his earlier years, Coughlin had been open to other religious
groups—inviting Catholics, Protestants, and Jews to join the National
Union for Social Justice. However, by 1938 he had become increas-
ingly anti-Semitic. He focused on what he perceived to be undue Jew-
ish influence on FDR and even published chapters of the famous
forged document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which accused
Jews of an international plot to take over the world, in Social Justice.
He sought scapegoats, and they were usually Jews. He pronounced
Jewish names in exaggerated fashion. His radio speeches became more
angry and vitriolic. He was labeled one of the “demagogues of the De-
pression.” During this period he began to rely on the writings of an
Irish theologian, Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., who provided him with
a theological rationale for his anti-Semitism.1
More than once, Hitler appeared on the cover of Social Justice.
Coughlin exhibited sympathy for the German leader and described
Nazism as “a defense mechanism against Communism” even after the
United States entered World War II. In 1942 Social Justice had its
mailing privileges revoked and President Roosevelt sent word to Arch-
bishop Edward Mooney of Detroit that, if Coughlin were not cur-
tailed, he would be indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Coughlin received the directive of his archbishop in a spirit of obedi-
ence, but confided to Fahey that it was related to “the almost univer-
sal ecclesiastical subservience to Franklin D. Roosevelt who is sur-
rounded by high Masons and dominated by crafty Jews.”2
The “radio priest” was silent on political issues after 1942 but con-
tinued as pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower until his retirement
in 1966. Although he wrote a few small volumes denouncing commu-
nism and questioning Vatican II, often with apocalyptic emphases, he
lived mostly in seclusion. He died on October 27, 1979 in Birming-
ham, Michigan.
Religion and Politics: A Question that Remains

In his earlier years, Coughlin was clearly a “star” on the American
scene and many Catholics were thrilled to have a young, attractive
Father Charles E. Coughlin 123
Irish priest as their spokesman. He was often on the cover of maga-

zines and newspapers. His popularity in those years could be com-
pared to the television celebrity of Bishop Fulton Sheen in the
post–World War II era. Coughlin is credited with popularizing the
papal social encyclicals (Rerum Novarum, 1891, and Quadragesimo
Anno, 1931) supporting the rights of working people. Unfortunately,
it was later discovered that Coughlin’s own financial dealings contra-
dicted some of what he was saying.
The radically anti-Semitic words and actions of Coughlin’s later
years created suspicion and fear. It had after-effects for years to come
and is one of the sad consequences of his legacy . In retrospect, I be-
lieve that the anti-Semitic attitudes of some Catholics, many of them
Irish Catholics, even today might be traced to the ideas inculcated by
Coughlin in the generation of the 1930s and 1940s and passed on to
their children and grandchildren.
Coughlin was a priest and a politician. At times he seemed to be
more the latter than the former. (The PBS special on “The Radio
Priest” with actual film footage of his speeches is a vivid presentation of
his radical stance.) Although some members of the Catholic hierarchy
such as Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago spoke out against his
tirades, according to canon law only his own bishop could silence him.
In an era when church-state relations were often a source of contro-
versy, Catholics were often portrayed as subservient to the Vatican
without real “freedom of speech.” (Recall the accusation that if Demo-
cratic presidential nominee Al Smith were elected president in 1928 the
pope would come to live in the White House!) This may account for
the hesitancy of some bishops to criticize Coughlin. Ironically, it was
Roosevelt’s threat to indict “the radio priest” that gave Archbishop
Mooney the impetus to “silence” Coughlin in the summer of 1942.
When the revised Code of Canon Law appeared in 1983 limiting
the role of priests in politics, I wondered if the specter of Charles E.
Coughlin was in the background. Even today, the political and social
actions of priests, ministers, rabbis, and other religious professionals are
often under scrutiny, especially at election time. To what degree should
religious authority limit the activities of its leaders who seem to go be-
yond the bounds? Conversely, is it proper for religious authority to ex-
ercise control over its leaders when political and moral issues overlap?
Speaking up for the faith is to be commended as priests and laity
have been empowered since Vatican II, but the danger of dema-
goguery—both overt and subtle—has not disappeared from the land.
124 MARY CHRISTINE ATHANS, B.V.M.
The Catholic conviction that our faith must become “public” (in ad-
dition to being personal and private)—and therefore influence soci-
ety—makes these questions even more complex. A study of Father
Coughlin allows us to explore these challenges anew.
Notes
1. See Mary Christine Athans, The Coughlin-Fahey Connection: Father

Charles E. Coughlin, Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., and Religious Anti-Semitism
in the United States, 1938–1942 (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).
2. Ibid., 182.
25
Monsignor George Higgins

and Monsignor John Ryan
Public Intellectuals and Social Reformers
KENNETH R. HIMES, O.F.M.
An oft-cited claim about American Catholicism in the decades prior

to Vatican II is that it was a sub-culture, set apart from the wider social
life of the nation. Although legitimate in several ways, the claim is not
applicable to the lives and ministries of John Ryan and George Higgins.
Both of these priests were notable as public intellectuals who utilized the
wisdom of the Roman Catholic tradition to address a range of social is-
sues in American life, especially the situation of working-class people.
The historian Joseph McShane has written that World War I was the
“midwife of American Catholic unity.”1 Prior to the war, the focus of
episcopal energy was the diocese, and the experience of Church for most
Catholics was the local parish. The war prompted bishops to think na-
tionally and to act corporately in addressing social issues. The desire to
support the wider war effort and the particular need to care for Cath-
olics in the military led the bishops to organize the National Catholic
War Council. With the war’s end, that fledgling organization evolved
into the National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC), and Catholics had
an institution to represent the Catholic community’s views on issues of
national concern. In 1919 the administrative board of the NCWC issued
a Catholic program for social reform in the post-war era.
125
126 KENNETH R. HIMES, O.F.M.
John Ryan: Advocate of a Living Wage
The author of the bishops’ program for social reform was a Min-
nesota priest, John A. Ryan, who was the first director of the Social
Action Department (SAD) within the NCWC. Ryan was a trained
moral theologian, also well versed in economic affairs. From the incep-
tion of SAD until 1945 he was the key person in articulating the
Catholic perspective on economic and social matters on behalf of the
U.S. Catholic bishops.
During the 1920s Ryan identified three problems with the Amer-
ican economy: insufficient wages for most workers, excessive incomes
for some capitalists, and the concentration of capital ownership in the
hands of a few. His proposed solution was economic democracy that
entailed social reform legislation and a new status for workers. Ryan
and his colleagues at SAD struggled throughout the twenties to get a
hearing for their views, but with the onset of the Great Depression and
the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 there was an openness to
economic and social reforms that had been resisted earlier.
Ryan was a strong advocate for bold federal action and govern-
ment programs to assist the working class and the poor. He earned the
nickname “Right Reverend New Dealer” by those who opposed his
support of Roosevelt’s policies. Yet Ryan was skilled in his intellectual
arguments that official Catholic social teaching, as found in the papal
encylicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, was compatible
with much of FDR’s New Deal. There is little doubt that for more
than twenty-five years Ryan was the most significant Catholic voice in
building a bridge between Catholic social thought and public policy
debates in the United States.
George Higgins and SAD

Shortly after completing his graduate studies at the Catholic Uni-
versity of America in 1944, George Higgins was invited to join the
staff of SAD. An early assignment was to accompany John Ryan, who
was seriously ill, home to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Ryan would die
four months later. Higgins worked closely with Ryan’s associates from
the founding era of SAD and he fit in well, for he was well versed in
Ryan’s vision and policies.
Monsignor George Higgins and Monsignor John Ryan 127
Higgins had studied Ryan’s theory of underconsumption. Ac-

cording to this theory, one of the major causes of the Great Depres-
sion was that the working class had insufficient incomes to enable their
consumption patterns to offset the decline in the economic fortunes
of the wealthy investment class. Promoting the cause of better wages
for workers was a major focus of the policies favored by SAD during
the years of Ryan and then Higgins.
Both Ryan and Higgins had a particular interest in labor unions.
They saw organized labor as crucial in promoting better wages.
Throughout the years after World War II, Higgins was the most
prominent defender of labor unions and advocate for worker justice
within the Catholic community. He authored annual Labor Day state-
ments issued by the bishops’ conference and wrote for the Catholic
News Service a syndicated weekly column that addressed issues of eco-
nomic justice.
Higgins also regularly attended union meetings and assemblies
and served on various committees and task forces associated with labor
organizations. He became an unofficial “chaplain” to many labor lead-
ers as well as a wise advisor to Catholic public officials in the expand-
ing federal government of the modern era. Though he was a man of
firm convictions, he was open minded in his encounters with others. I
was privileged to know Higgins personally and never heard him deni-
grate individuals even when he disagreed strongly with them. On
more than one occasion he said to me, “He’s wrong, but not com-
pletely wrong.” The “not completely wrong” caveat was Higgins’s ac-
knowledgment that he could learn from those with whom he argued.
Higgins and Vatican II

In the late sixties Higgins became involved in the plight of farm
workers who lived itinerant lives, working long days for low pay and
few benefits. His advocacy of the United Farm Workers, a new kind of
labor organization led by Cesar Chavez, led Higgins into policy de-
bates about related issues of race and immigration. The farm worker
issue also forced Higgins to confront some traditional labor leaders
who opposed Chavez and sought to undercut his new movement.
As a result of his involvement as a peritus (advisor) to the Amer-
ican bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Higgins
was prepared for his role with the farm workers. The experience of
128 KENNETH R. HIMES, O.F.M.
Vatican II had given him a clear sense of the worldwide Church and
put him into closer contact with the issues of poverty, work, and jus-
tice as these were viewed by people outside the prosperous United
States. Higgins also read much of the theological literature that both
prepared for and developed out of the council. This gave him a re-
newed sense of how the Church should serve people in a wide vari-
ety of cultures and societies.
In the years following the council, Higgins expanded his involve-
ments in public life through the promotion of Christian-Jewish dia-
logue, racial justice, and fair treatment of immigrants. He also ad-
dressed issues of justice within the Church and the treatment of
workers in church-related institutions. Holding fast to his convictions
about the importance of organized labor, Higgins opposed the grow-
ing animus against labor during the “conservative revolution” of the
1980s.
In a “memoir” written shortly before his retirement from the bish-
ops’ conference in 1994, Higgins cited a quotation from John Ryan
that he claimed as his own credo: “Effective labor unions are still by
far the most powerful force in society for the protection of the la-
borer’s rights and the improvement of his or her condition. No
amount of employer benevolence, no diffusion of a sympathetic atti-
tude on the part of the public, no increase of beneficial legislation, can
adequately supply for the lack of organization among the workers
themselves.”2
Lessons for the Church Today

In his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”)
written in 1891, Pope Leo XIII stated that the social question of the
time was the plight of the worker in the new industrial age. In the
United States the document inspired a young John Ryan to employ
the resources of the Catholic community and its institutions to im-
prove the situation of the working class. In 1931 another pope, Pius
XI, added his support for social reform and inspired another genera-
tion of Catholic activists. Building on the example of priests like Ryan,
George Higgins joined and eventually led those clerics who came to
be known as “labor priests,” men who were dedicated to seeing the
Church take up the cause of workers and their right to organize.
For both Ryan and Higgins the ultimate goal was not to advance
organized labor. Rather, they saw labor unions as the key to economic
Monsignor George Higgins and Monsignor John Ryan 129
justice, and economic justice as essential to the gospel challenge to

protect human dignity and promote human rights. In the example of
these two men, both trained and formed within the pre-conciliar
church, there are several lessons for our time.
The Church cannot simply be a sub-culture or self-enclosed social
world; it does not exist for itself but for the wider society and world.
The Church’s mission cannot be understood as a message of religious
salvation having no political or economic implications for life in soci-
ety. Just as Ryan and Higgins were prepared to work with and support
independent organizations like labor unions in the cause of the com-
mon good, so too the Church today may forge practical alliances with
groups and institutions with whom the Church shares common
ground in promoting human dignity and well-being, even when the
fullness of the Church’s mission differs from that of such associations.
Finally, Ryan and especially Higgins were each not only a public
intellectual, but a certain kind of public intellectual—what has been
called an “organic intellectual.” By that phrase is meant an intellectual
who is embedded in the lives and activities of people, engaged not
only with ideas but also with the experiences out of which ideas are
born and shaped.
A theologian or pastoral leader who is an organic intellectual will
be engaged in doing practical theology, allowing the lived experience
of individuals and communities to influence the questions posed to the
tradition as well as the answers that are drawn from the interaction of
experience and tradition. Theology and spirituality, if they are to be
life-giving, must arise out of the ordinary world of human experience,
helping people see the presence of God in the lived world and reveal-
ing God’s concern that the world be guided by norms of justice and
fairness.
Notes
1. Joseph McShane, “Sufficiently Radical”: Catholicism, Progressivism,

and the Bishops’ Program of 1919 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press,
1986), 62.
2. George Higgins (with William Bole), Organized Labor and the Church
(New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), 78.
26
Mary Perkins Ryan

Loyal and Prophetic Woman of the Church1
PADRIAC O’HARE
Mary Perkins Ryan was in the vanguard of the Liturgical-Cate-

chetical Movement in the Catholic Church from the 1930s on. This
was, and remains, a movement to render liturgy, above all the Eu-
charist, ever more humanly transforming—not merely rubrically im-
pressive; a movement to render church-education more humanly
transforming, not merely an affair, in the words of Joseph Andreas
Jungmann, of “arid intellectualism.” The Liturgical-Catechetical
Movement insists now, as it always has, that eucharistic praying moves
hearts at a deeper, more effective level than any other form of “edu-
cating,” other forms being desirable and necessary but subordinate.
And “transformative” means to be more free: liturgy and catechesis
that helps us be more free, more free in ourselves, more free in Christ.
There is in these first words, already, a criticism of the predomi-
nant pattern of liturgy and church-education in illo temporae (“at that
time”). Will I therefore succeed or fail in achieving the mandate of our
editors, not only to be “critical,” and “recognize shortcomings” of the
pre-conciliar Church in the way I handle my subject, but to address
the subject in such a way that the reader can also be helped to “retrieve
spiritual wisdom from those days to ours.” I think I have the formula.
Describing Mary Ryan’s work in the vanguard will dramatize what
needed fixing in those days. Describing what sort of a Catholic, what
130
Mary Perkins Ryan 131
sort of a human being, Mary Ryan was will enable the reader to “re-
trieve spiritual wisdom” for our own time.
A Woman ahead of Her Time

Mary Ryan was born in April, 1912, and died in October, 1993.
She was fifty years old when the Second Vatican Council convened.
During her professional life she authored, co-authored, edited, or
translated twenty-six books, the first of which, At Your Ease In the
Catholic Church (1937), dealt with the relationship between liturgy
and catechesis. This was three years before the first Liturgical Week in
the United States, an event at which a twenty-five year old Mary2
spoke; her topic was the lay person praying the prayer of the Hours,
the rich and absorbing monastic prayer of the Church. Mary worked
with Michael Mathis, C.S.C., one of the first wave of distinguished
liturgical renewers at the University of Notre Dame’s Liturgical Insti-
tute, founded in l947. And, over many creative years, Mary edited two
exceptional journals, publications the pages of which featured a stag-
gering array of topics of educational, pastoral, and theological concern
and gave voice to an equally impressive range of the best people prac-
ticing and theorizing about these concerns (all of them gently but
firmly and precisely edited by Mary). These were The Living Light and
Professional Approaches for Christian Educators (PACE).
The twentieth-century Catechetical Movement in the United
States had it roots principally in nineteenth- and early twentieth-cen-
tury European movements of liturgical reform and renewal. Historians
of liturgical reform trace its nineteenth-century origins to French Bene-
dictines and to the Abbey of Solesmes. In 1918 Romano Guardini’s
study, The Spirit of the Liturgy, served to broadened zeal for liturgical
renewal. The United States liturgical pioneer, H. A. Reinhold, said of
reading Guardini, “. . . the restrictions and commandments that had
seemed to be the essence of Catholicism . . . vanished before the vision
of Christ’s Mystical Body and the incredible beauty of His Mystical Life
among us through the sacraments and the mysteries.”3
In the United States, a defining figure in the movement was the
Benedictine monk, Virgil Michel (l890–l938). Michel translated the
works of European liturgical reformers (for example Dom Lambert
Beauduin’s Liturgy: The Life of the Church, with its call to “democra-
tize the liturgy”), and Michel pointed persuasively to the educational
effects of liturgy and to its social consequences, its social demands.4
132 PADRIAC O’HARE
This is the backdrop and context of the greatest of Mary’s contri-

butions to reform and renewal, her contributions to constituting a re-
newed conciliar Catholic Church. Her own words, delivered to us
during that heady time, precisely capture the essence of her passion,
the needed reforms she promoted and embraced.
In Mary’s Own Words

Mary’s first words here are from the year l963, when the Second
Vatican Council was meeting. They appeared in the journal Worship.
“A catechesis centered in the liturgy will . . . be completely realistic,
leaving out of account none of the realities of human experience and,
as such, will correspond to the best desires for reality, for vital experi-
ence, for meaningfulness in life.”5
These are astounding words: church-education that emanates from
rich immersion in liturgical acts must be real, must serve the real, must
flood actual human experience with meaning and illumine ordinary ex-
perience. The remarks partake in the theological revolution that Vati-
can II sought to enshrine. They were prepared for by Newman’s dis-
tinction between “the real” and the merely “notional” and by Blondel’s
“method of immanence,” overcoming the dead letter “extrinsicism.”
They echo Rahner’s insistence that we are already grasped in our expe-
riences by the Divine, but we must be taught to pay attention, to lis-
ten, to hear. Pre-conciliar liturgical action and church-education were
at least as concerned with conforming themselves to inherited dog-
matic formulas as they were to outfitting Christians to follow Christ. As
Mary’s words reveal, the renewal was about illumining concrete, exis-
tential, and recurring human experiences in liturgical action and
church-education, about relating these actions, this educating, to what
Christ means for the ordinary events of our lives.
And the remarks show that Mary partook, as well, in the best ed-
ucational thinking of the times, of any time. Educational practice
should be humanly useful.
Note more of her words, from a presentation at the l961 Liturgi-
cal Conference in Washington, D.C., words that predate the opening
of the council by a year: “Today we are all inescapably on trial before
our neighbors, before the world. We are called to witness not so much
to the truth of Christianity as to its values [Mary’s emphasis] . . . before
a world that has generally lost hope in the ultimate worthwhileness of
human life . . . in everything we do, we have to proclaim ‘Christ in us,

our hope and glory’ to a world losing hope in humanity along with
faith in God.”6
These are words that more than hint at the intimate link between
worship and action (action that is merciful, just, forgiving, and com-
passionate), a defining feature of what Mary and the other citizens of
this vanguard bequeathed us.
So Mary’s vision was a vision of liturgical-catechetical practice in a
renewed Church, a vision suffused with incarnational theology, prag-
matic education, and ethically demanding liturgy. In How Firm a
Foundation: Voices of the Early Liturgical Movement, Kathleen Hughes
says of Mary that she “. . . brought together liturgical and catechetical
renewal . . .” into a “. . . national movement.”7
A Controversial Bridge-Builder
In 1964, again during the Second Vatican Council, Mary pub-
lished a highly controversial book, Are Parochial Schools the Answer?
Catholic Education in the Light of the Council. In it Mary wrote: “In
trying to provide a total Catholic education for as many of our young
people as possible, we have been neglecting to provide anything like
an adequate religious formation for all those not in Catholic schools,
and we have been neglecting the religious formation of adults.”8
Gabriel Moran has written that Mary “. . . took an unmerciful verbal
beating in the diocesan press and at various conferences that could
hardly speak her name. ‘That woman’ or ‘the housewife who wants to
destroy the Catholic schools’ were the typical forms of reference.”9
This defining event in Mary’s professional life, there can be no
doubt, was linked to her passion for a catechesis that emerges from the
richest of liturgical experiences, liturgical and catechetical renewal for
all! Then, as now, a suspicious obsession with the priority of Catholic
school ministry even to the extent of pauperizing broad parish minis-
terial action was in evidence.10 The historian of Catholic religious ed-
ucation, Favette Veverke, captures how important was Mary’s contri-
bution and her passion for a multivalent liturgical-catechetical practice
in the Church:
[Mary] questioned the adequacy and the justice of an educa-

tional strategy that ignored the vast number Catholics schools
134 PADRIAC O’HARE
did not reach. Her argument helped to direct renewed atten-

tion, resources and personnel into other catechetical efforts
such as CCD, CYO, youth ministry, and retreat movements
for those outside of Catholic schools . . . Her critique raised
consciousness and created a climate that would support the
explosion of ministries such as the RCIA process, parish re-
newal programs, lay ministry training programs, support
groups and adult Bible study.”11
Prayer and Loyalty

Gabriel Moran characterizes Mary as “. . . one of the last links to a
vital and rich Catholicism that antedated Vatican II . . . a bridge be-
tween an old time Catholicism and a still shaky new form.”12 But what
does her life tote across the bridge? What can we retrieve of the “spir-
itual wisdom of those days” from this life? Here it is essential to have
known the woman. And I did!
These are two features of the woman we may contemplate with
benefit. First, Mary’s theological speech emerged from praying; she
was a person of deep and daily prayer. Second, in the most adverse of
times, she was loyal to the Catholic Church. As Gabriel Moran says of
her vanguard generation, now all gone, “The virtue I most identify
with this generation of Catholics is loyalty.”13
I do not mention her prayer life and Catholic loyalty as equivalent
values. Retrieving the sapiential emphasis in theological speech (that
wise theological speech comes from praying) seems to me essential to
save the Church from theological obscurity and dogmatism, and even
violence. Loyalty to the Church, on the other hand, loyalty to the
Church even as a structure of power (though not because it is a struc-
ture of power), this seems to me a more ambiguous proposition. Still,
there is little doubt that, as for Dorothy Day before her and Gustavo
Gutierrez after her, for Mary speech and advocacy about God and the
“things of God” required loyalty to the faith community as well. And
this seems to be essentially tied to a sense of the length of the journey.
Of Mary and her vanguard compatriots Moran says, “Their com-
mitment was to people and to the institution for the long journey.”14
In these challenging times for both liturgical and catechetical reform,
we do well to learn from Mary the need for good prayer to sustain us
in wise loyalty—over the long haul.
Notes
1. Elements of this essay are reworked from an essay I published at the

time of Mary’s death: “Mary Perkins Ryan (1912–1993) Mulier Fortis,” The
Living Light 30, no. 3 (Spring l994).
2. As Dorothy Day was “Dorothy,” Mary Ryan was “Mary” to all; the
unorthodox usage here is the only mode of reference that feels comfortable.
3. Quoted in Ann Morrow Heekin, “Mary Perkins Ryan: Twentieth
Century Religious Educator: Educating to a New Vision of the Church”
(PhD dissertation, Fordham University, 2006), 20. I am indebted to Ann
Morrow Heekin of Sacred Heart University in Connecticut for her splendid
doctoral dissertation on Mary.
4. The characterization of Michel’s work is in Heekin’s “Mary Perkins
Ryan,” 24. Indeed, the history sketched and opinions noted in this and the
previous paragraph are all those of Ann Morrow Heekin.
5. Mary Perkins Ryan, “The Focus of Catechetics,” Worship 37 (March
1963): 240.
6. Mary Perkins Ryan, “”Witness to the World,” an address given at the
North American Liturgical Week in Washington, DC, in 1961; 65–66 in the
Proceedings.
7. Kathleen Hughes, How Firm a Foundation: Voices of the Early Liturgi-
cal Movement (Chicago: Liturgical Training Publications, 1990), 219.
8. Quoted from Mary’s book but in Professional Approaches for Christian
Educators (May 1991), 283.
9. Gabriel Moran, “Loyal and Steadfast,” Professional Approaches for
Christian Educators (November 1994): 3.
10. I am not here criticizing the maintenance of a private Catholic second-
ary school system, at once fiscally independent of parishes and often remark-
ably prophetic.
11. Fayette Breaux Veverke, “Are Parochial Schools the Answer? Twenty
Five Years Later,” Professional Approaches for Christian Educators (May
1991), 284.
12. Moran, “Loyal and Steadfast,” 3.
13. Ibid., 4.
14. Ibid.
27
Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D. de Namur

Passionate Voice for Justice
MARY E. HINES
Early Years
When Helen Neal entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in

1943, not long after completing undergraduate work at Emmanuel
College in Boston in 1942, the world was in the turmoil of war, but
expectations for the life of a religious sister seemed pretty clearly de-
fined. Like many active congregations of religious sisters of the time,
the Sisters of Notre Dame engaged in the active apostolate of teach-
ing while living a very cloistered life in community. While the Sisters
of Notre Dame always had a central commitment to “the poor in the
most abandoned places,” the spirituality of the time tended to be pri-
vatistic, concerned with personal striving for “perfection.” Spirituality
focused on saving one’s own soul, while apostolic activity in the world
was kept separate from this. The less one had to do with the world the
better! The Sisters of Notre Dame in Massachusetts ran numerous el-
ementary schools, high schools, and Emmanuel College in Boston.
At first, Sister Marie Augusta’s religious life followed the normal
pattern of the time. She was assigned to teach high school, first in
South Boston and then in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and at the same
time completed a master’s degree in sociology at Boston College. In
1953 she began teaching sociology at Emmanuel College, which re-
136
Marie August Neal, S.N.D. de Namur 137
mained her base until her retirement in 1991 and where she served
three terms as chair of the Sociology Department. But the course of
her religious life was far different from 1943 expectations. By the time
of Sister Marie Augusta’s death in 2004, religious life had changed
dramatically. She was a major architect of that change.
The two major themes of her life, commitment to social justice
and the need for renewal in religious life for women coalesced to form
the driving force of her life. Although Vatican II and the other social
movements of the 1960s, especially civil rights and feminism, rein-
forced Sister Marie Augusta’s commitment to these issues, its seeds
were sown well before the council by her father, Thomas. She credits
him with introducing her to Catholic social teaching by her exposure
to the Catholic Action movement during her time as a student at Em-
manuel and by the concern for the poor of the Sisters of Notre Dame.
Laying the Groundwork: The Priests’ and Sisters’ Surveys

Sister Marie Augusta received her doctorate in sociology from
Harvard University in 1963, at a time when she was an unusual
species in that rarified atmosphere, both as a woman and as a Roman
Catholic sister. At Harvard she studied under Talcott Parsons, a
prominent sociologist particularly influential in the 1960s. She tested
his functional theories of social change empirically in her doctoral dis-
sertation, which was published in 1965 under the title Values and In-
terests in Social Change. In it she surveyed a sample of priests from the
archdiocese of Boston to determine if values or interests predomi-
nated in their attitudes to change, whether positive or negative. Sig-
nificantly she found that, though in the early 1960s there was a con-
siderable percentage of priests (mostly younger) open to change on
the basis of their Christian values, those in positions of authority
tended to fall into the “non-change on the basis of interest” category.
Sister Marie Augusta suggested that as these priests grew older the
numbers of value-change priests would increase and move into posi-
tions of authority. And this did happen—for a while. Coinciding as it
did with Vatican Council II and its call for aggiornamento, or updat-
ing in the Catholic Church, her study attracted wide attention and set
the agenda for much of her life’s work. She is credited with develop-
ing what became known as the “Neal scale,” a method for evaluating
attitudes toward values and change. This early work was done in the
era of mainframe computers and punch cards!
138 MARY E. HINES
Not long after the priests’ study she was asked to conduct a simi-
lar survey of attitudes to change among women religious. The first sis-
ters’ survey, conducted in 1966, was initiated by the Conference of
Major Superiors of Women (CMSW, now Leadership Conference of
Women Religious, or LCWR) to assess the responses of Catholic Sis-
ters in the United States to the conciliar Decree on Renewal of Reli-
gious Life. Sister Marie Augusta was asked to direct the CMSW Re-
search Committee and to design the survey instrument for the study.
The results of this survey were distributed to the participating congre-
gations and in many cases provided the foundation for the chapters of
renewal held in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1982 the survey was
replicated and extended to provide an assessment of the almost twenty
years of post-Vatican II renewal of religious congregations of women.
Results were published in Catholic Sisters in Transition: From the
1960’s to the 1980’s. The sisters’ survey had an enormous influence on
the renewal of religious life in the United States.
Themes of Her Lifetime: Social Justice

In 1970 Sister Marie Augusta was invited to South Africa by the
South African Catholic Education Council to do a study of Catholic
schools. Although the bishops had expected that she would study only
white schools, she insisted that to do the research adequately she
would need to study both black and white schools. On this same trip
she also visited the sisters of Notre Dame in Brazil. These powerful ex-
periences of institutionalized racism, poverty, and oppression outside
the United States solidified her conviction that the privatistic spiritu-
ality of the past must give way to a biblically based spirituality that fo-
cused on alleviating the systemic causes of poverty and oppression.
Her students at Emmanuel from this time recall that from 1965
on she started her introductory sociology classes by asking the ques-
tion, “Why are there poor people in a rich society like the United
States?” and from the 1970s the question became, “Why is it that two
thirds of the world is poor when we have the technologies sufficient
to provide well for all but we do not?” No students of Sister Marie Au-
gusta (or young Sisters of Notre Dame, who often helped compile sur-
vey results) escaped the exhortation to do critical social analysis and
her insistence on the need for conscientization, or raising awareness of
and opposition to oppressive social structures. The centrality of social
Marie August Neal, S.N.D. de Namur 139
justice to the mission of Emmanuel College remains a legacy of Sister

Marie Augusta.
Like many prophets, Sister Marie Augusta’s passionate advocacy
for social justice tended to make the comfortable uncomfortable, and
in those Cold War times she was often accused of being a communist.
It must be acknowledged that because of her clarity about the needs
of the world, Church, and religious life she could sometimes be impa-
tient with those who didn’t see things quite as clearly, or as quickly.
She didn’t view herself as a revolutionary, however. In an interview
with the Boston Globe she said that she was a “faithful Catholic and a
committed scholar who simply applied the teachings of the church to
the world around her.”
From the 1970s on Sister Marie Augusta was widely recognized
and in much demand as speaker, author, and consultant. She was one
of two religious members of the Massachusetts Governor’s Commis-
sion on the status of women in the 1960s and visiting professor at Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley; Harvard Divinity School; and Boston
College. She served as president of the Association for the Sociology of
Religion and president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reli-
gion, groundbreaking roles for a Catholic sister. Among her numerous
honorary doctorates is one from the University of Notre Dame where
her papers are archived. She published more than seventy articles and
six books probing different aspects of justice, peace, and civil and
human rights, both in the Church and in society. Emblematic of her
theological/sociological approach was her 1977 book, A Socio-Theology
of Letting Go where she applies the method of the liberation theolo-
gians within the first-world context of the United States. It is the re-
sponsibility of a first-world church, she said, faced with the needs of the
third world, to relinquish its hold on power, prestige, and wealth.
Themes of Her Lifetime: Renewal in Religious Life

Sister Marie Augusta Neal both lived through and facilitated the
dramatic changes that took place in religious life in the post–Vatican
II years. She advocated a spirituality focused on alleviating this-worldly
injustice rather than being exclusively focused on otherworldly salva-
tion. She had an enormous personal impact not only on those she en-
countered in the classroom but also through her lectures and writings.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, credits a talk by
140 MARY E. HINES
Sister Marie Augusta as a conversion experience that transformed her

vision of religious life and set her on to the path of social activism. Kip
Tiernan, founder of Rosie’s Place, the first women’s shelter in Boston,
and a powerful advocate for the poor and marginalized, both inspired
and was inspired by her friend, Sister Marie Augusta.
But through these changes Sister Marie Augusta didn’t lose the
core values of her early community experience. While on her trips to
South Africa and Brazil, and on other travels, she wrote back fre-
quently to her community to share her experiences. Sister Janet Eis-
ner, president of Emmanuel, recalls being surprised, as a newly ap-
pointed and very young college president, when Sister Marie Augusta
asked her permission to travel and provided her with a detailed itiner-
ary of her trips. And Sister Marie Augusta’s activism was always rooted
in prayer, in scripture, and in the mission of the poor of the Sisters of
Notre Dame. She frequently evoked the Leviticus theme of the Jubilee
year, which she interpreted as calling “for a return to the people of
what is rightfully theirs, what they need for human development.” Sis-
ter Janet Eisner said at the launching of Themes of a Lifetime, a collec-
tion of Sister Marie Augusta’s works that “Sr. Marie Augusta’s passion
for justice and her conviction in the power of education reflects St.
Julie’s [the founder of the Sisters of Notre Dame] vision. Like Sr.
Marie Augusta, St. Julie was moved by God to act to correct the
wrongs done to the poor in her day.”
Elegant, soft-spoken, and radical, as one of her former students
described her, Sister Marie Augusta insisted that withdrawal from the
world and its most critical issues was no longer an option for an au-
thentic spirituality in today’s Church and world. Women religious are
called to be in the forefront of the struggle for justice and human
rights that is the gospel mandate for the whole Church.
28
African American Catholics

Witnesses to Fidelity
CYPRIAN DAVIS, O.S.B.
I fell in love with the Catholic Church when I was fifteen years
old. This was not just the pre–Vatican Church; it was the medieval
Church, the Church of pageantry and monasticism. I was a history
buff. It was my uncle who took me to Mass one Sunday morning. I
was about twelve years old. I was enthralled. To the dismay of my
mother, I soon began to attend Mass on my own. My grandfather had
left the Catholic Church when she was a baby. She was reared as a
Presbyterian. Only later did she discover the Catholic Church and
then became a very devout Catholic.
A Different Church
The first Catholic church I came to know was St. Augustine’s
Church at 15th and M Street in downtown Washington. It was one of
the oldest black Catholic parishes in the United States. The parish-
ioners were freed blacks who before the Civil War had raised money to
build a church where they could have Mass every Sunday, with their
own pastor and choir. Abraham Lincoln permitted the parishioners to
raise money by giving a party on the White House lawn on July 4,
1864. It seems that the president and Mrs. Lincoln were among the
thousand or so visitors. Financially, it was a success.1
141
142 CYPRIAN DAVIS, O.S.B.
The nation’s capital has always had and still has a sizable black
population; the number of black Catholics has always been large and
influential. Many black Catholics, like my grandfather, were descen-
dants of slaves from the Jesuit-owned plantations in southern Mary-
land. Washington, in fact, was a southern city. It was segregated, but
there were no “colored” or “white” signs. It was a benign segregation.
Not all Catholic churches welcomed African Americans. In fact, in
some places the pastor pointed out to African Americans that the
Catholic church for blacks was down the street. In other places there
was segregated seating; even worse, there were some pre–Vatican II
churches in which blacks had to receive Communion after whites had
received. On the other hand, many black Catholic churches like St.
Augustine’s were well known for their music, their vibrant liturgy, and
their social justice leadership.
Segregation and Civil Rights

In the case of St. Augustine’s, the parish church was known not
only for its music but also for its active participation in the civil rights
movement. Howard University, one of the historic black colleges es-
tablished after the Civil War, was one among many educational insti-
tutions in the city. Thomas Wyatt Turner (1877–1978), a black
Catholic lay leader, worked tirelessly for an end to racism within the
American Catholic Church. He had been a student at the Catholic
University of America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lack
of funds forced him to leave Catholic University. He would eventually
obtain his doctorate from Cornell University and become a professor
at Howard University and later at Hampton University. Always a fer-
vent Catholic, he began his fight for racial justice within the Catholic
Church during the first World War when he was a parishioner at St Au-
gustine’s Church. He challenged the racism found in the American
Catholic Church and spoke of the “dessicating [sic] race prejudice at
every stage of our religious observance.”2 He founded the “Federated
Colored Catholics” as an activist organization working for a “greater
participation of black Catholics in the cause of racial justice.”
Just as Washington was a segregated city, so was the Catholic
Church in Washington. Catholic University closed its doors to African
Americans in the first decades of the twentieth century.3 The admit-
tance of African American students began again in the 1940s. George-
town University was closed to blacks well into the 1960s. Ironically,
African American Catholics 143
one of the most eminent presidents of Georgetown University (the

title at the time was “Rector”) was a former slave who became presi-
dent in 1874.4 Because of his light complexion, few knew that Patrick
Francis Healy was the brother of James Augustine Healy, the first
black bishop in the United States. Patrick Francis resigned as president
in 1882. He died in 1910. Most of the private Catholic schools in the
United States—primary schools, high schools, academies, prep
schools—were closed to African American students until the 1960s.
Black and Catholic

Xavier University in Louisiana was founded by Mother Katharine
Drexel (who has since been canonized) in 1925. It was and still is the
only black Catholic university in the United States. Katherine Drexel
(1858–1955) began her congregation, known as the Sisters of the
Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, in 1891. It was
dedicated to the evangelization and education of Native Americans
and African Americans. This modern American saint worked for social
justice with prophetic zeal. She contributed to the NAACP; she sup-
ported anti-lynching legislation in the U.S. Congress. She urged her
sisters to do the same.
In 1938, Mother Grace Damman, president of Manhattanville
College in New York, announced the acceptance of a young African
American woman as a student in the prestigious Catholic liberal arts
college operated by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Mother Grace
Damman wrote that a young Catholic woman who met all the re-
quirements had a right to admittance whether she was African Ameri-
can or white. It was time for a young Catholic woman to accept not
only the teaching of Catholicism but also its practice.5
In the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic leaders like Mother Katherine
Drexel, John LaFarge, S.J.; George K. Hunton; Dorothy Day; the
Baroness Catherine de Hueck; and members of the hierarchy such as
Cardinal Joseph Ritter, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, and Archbishop
Joseph Francis Rummel worked for the black community and stood
up for justice and Catholic teaching.
In May of 1953, Vincent Waters, bishop of Raleigh, North Car-
olina, traveled to the small town of Newton Grove, North Carolina. Wa-
ters, a southern bishop, had learned to overcome his own background
and southern sentiment. He had grown to understand what it meant to
be part of the Body of Christ. He had called for desegregation in the
Catholic churches in the diocese, and he wanted to be present when the

two frame Catholic churches merged in Newton Grove. These two
churches, St. Benedict’s Church for blacks and Our Holy Redeemer
Church for whites, were only two hundred yards from each other. In
April Bishop Waters had written a pastoral letter to the people of North
Carolina, saying, “There is no segregation of races to be tolerated in any
Catholic Church in the Diocese of Raleigh . . . A Church not uniting all
races and peoples in one body could not be Christ’s Mystical Body.”6
The reaction of the white parishioners in Our Holy Redeemer Church
was anger and bitterness. Standing outside, they shouted and jeered at
those going into the church. There were three Masses at Our Holy Re-
deemer Church. As many as one hundred whites gathered outside while
Bishop Waters preached at two of the Masses. Inside, there were only
twenty-nine people, black and white, who sat in separated groups.7 Con-
vinced that segregation was immoral and contrary to the Church’s
teaching, Waters believed that obedience to the authority of the Church
was sufficient to bring about change. He considered that racism was
heresy, pointing out that the Second World War was fought against the
notion of a “master race.”
African American parishioners, on the other hand, were affected in
a different way. In most instances, the black community was moved
into the white parish. They were not welcomed but only tolerated. An
African American priest, Monsignor Thomas Hadden, the first black
priest in the diocese of Raleigh, noted that “African-American
Catholics who found themselves in an integrated parish often did not
participate fully in the life of the parish.” He went on to say that often
there was “little sensitivity to . . . Black Catholic culture and distinctive-
ness.” It is worth noting that African American parishes after the sec-
ond Vatican Council easily introduced black culture and music into
the liturgy. 8
African American Priests

The history of African American priests is a long and painful one.
When I recognized my vocation to priesthood, I had to face the fact that
it was not easy for young black men and women to realize their religious
vocation. I was told that only certain dioceses and only certain monas-
teries accepted African Americans. In fact, when I first became interested
in monasticism, I wrote to the abbot of a monastic community asking
whether a black would be accepted into their community. I had been
African American Catholics 145
told to state clearly that I was a “Negro.” The response was also clear.
It would be better for me to enter the Josephites. Angry and disap-
pointed at first, I would later have the joy of entering St. Meinrad Arch-
abbey. It must be stated, moreover, that after graduating from high
school I received a scholarship to the Catholic University of America.9
Black American Catholic men sought to enter the priesthood even
before the Civil War. William Augustine Williams, who was from Vir-
ginia and converted to Catholicism, became a student for the priest-
hood at the Urban College in Rome in 1855, hoping to be adopted
by an American bishop. Despite his efforts, Williams was rejected for
priesthood on the grounds that American Catholics—that is white
Catholics—would not accept a black priest.10 The first black priests in
our history were the three Healy brothers—the previously mentioned
James Augustine Healy and Francis Patrick Healy as well as Sherwood
Alexander Healy—all the slave offspring of a slave-holder in Georgia.
Brilliant and ill-fated, they did not identify with fellow African Amer-
icans. On the other hand, Augustus Tolton, born a slave, eventually
became a student at the Urban College in Rome and was made a pas-
tor of a black parish in Chicago. A man of gentleness and generosity,
he had a heart open to all African Americans. The number of African
American priests grew slowly in the period before the Second Vatican
Council and then began to increase in the 1960s.
Some would say that African American Catholics are merely the stepchil-
dren of American Catholicism, usually forgotten and overlooked. Nev-
ertheless, there is no question that their presence in the Church has been
a witness to fidelity and to hope. African American Catholics like Mary
Lou Williams, Llewellyn Scott, Lena Edwards, A. P. Tureaud, Claude
McKay, Ralph Metcalfe, Earl Johnson, and so many others made signif-
icant contributions to American Catholicism in the Church before the
Second Vatican Council.
“Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed because God tried
them and found them worthy of himself” (Wisdom 3:5).
Notes
1. Morris J. MacGregor, The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community:

St. Augustine’s in Washington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1999), 36–39.
2. Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., The History of Black Catholics in the United

States (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 220.
3. Roy J. Deferrari, Memoirs of the Catholic University of America.
1918–1960 (Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul, 1962), 281–90. See also C.
Joseph Nuesse, The Catholic University of America. A Centennial History.
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990.) 190–91.
4. Albert Foley, S.J., Dream of an Outcaste: Patrick F. Healy: The Story
of the Slaveborn Georgian who Became the Second Founder of America’s Great
Catholic University, Georgetown. (Tuscaloosa, AL: Portals Press, 1989).
5. Davis, The History of Black Catholics, 254.
6. Quotation from the pastoral letter as found on page 325 of Mark
Newman’s “Toward ‘Blessings of Liberty and Justice’: The Catholic Church
in North Carolina and Desegregation, 1945–1974,” The North Carolina His-
torical Review 85 (2008): 317–51.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 348, n 72. Thomas P. Hadden, “A ‘catechism’ on African-
American Ministry and Evangelization,” North Carolina Catholic, August 26,
2001 (Hadden interview).
9. Catholic Scholarships for Negroes, Inc., was established to provide
financial aid for African American Catholics who had promise for advanced
education. It was sponsored by Mrs. Roger Putnam and Richard Cardinal
Cushing.
10. Stephen Ochs, Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle
for Black Priests, 1871–1960 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1990) 29–31 The work by Ochs is a detailed history of black Catholic
priests in the United States.
29
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

Twentieth-century Prophets
ROBERT ELLSBERG
She was a thirty-five-year-old single mother, a journalist with a

background in the labor movement and radical politics, and a recent
convert to Catholicism. He was a Frenchman twenty years her senior,
a self-described “peasant philosopher” with a thick accent, an overcoat
stuffed with pamphlets, and a rumpled suit that looked as if he had
slept in it (as he had). She had just returned from covering a Commu-
nist-organized “Hunger March of the Unemployed” in Washington,
DC. He was waiting for her in her New York apartment, convinced,
on the basis of a recommendation from the editor of Commonweal,
that she was the one to set his ideas in motion. It is hard to imagine a
more unlikely partnership. And yet that meeting between Dorothy
Day and Peter Maurin in December 1932 must be counted as one of
the most significant events in the history of American Catholicism.
Dorothy Day: Reconciling Faith with Commitment to the Poor

For Dorothy Day, the meeting with Peter Maurin seemed like an
answer to prayer. Literally. While covering the march in Washington
she had found herself wondering why Catholics were not leading the
struggle for social justice. She had made her way to the Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception (auspiciously it was December 8, the very
147
148 ROBERT ELLSBERG
feast day of that Marian dogma), and had prayed with tears in her eyes
for some way to reconcile her Catholic faith with her commitment to
the cause of the poor and oppressed.
She had come to that prayer by an improbable road. Born in 1897
to a respectable middle-class family, she had dropped out of college
and gravitated to New York where she worked for a succession of rad-
ical journals and causes. She was arrested twice. She took part in
marches and demonstrations. But there was always something that set
her apart from her radical friends. As one of them observed, she was
always “too religious” to make a good Communist.
Not that she had much use for any church. As a teenager she had
renounced Christianity, on the grounds that Christians seemed to have
little to say about the burning social issues of the day. She had admired
the lives of the saints and the stories of their heroic charity. “But where
were the saints to change the social order, not just to minister to the
slaves, but to do away with slavery?”
The turning point in Day’s life came with the birth of her daugh-
ter Tamar, in 1926. The child’s father was an anarchist and atheist,
whom she deeply loved, though he had no interest in marriage. The
experience of pregnancy filled her heart with such a sense of gratitude
that it awakened her instinct for reverence and prayer. She found her-
self wanting to have her daughter baptized a Catholic, a step she even-
tually took herself, even when it required the painful separation from
her “common-law husband.” That loss was compounded, in her mind,
by a feeling that in joining the Church she was betraying the cause of
the working class—crossing over to an ally of the rich and powerful.
That is how her friends viewed it, and she saw their point. So with her
conversion she entered a lonely period, searching in the wilderness for
some sign of her true vocation. That search had led to her providen-
tial meeting with Peter Maurin.
Peter Maurin: Blowing the Lid Off the Dynamite in the Gospels
And what of him? Peter Maurin was born in 1877 to a peasant
family in southern France. Educated by the Christian Brothers, he had
made an unsuccessful stab at a vocation in that teaching order. He had
participated in “Le Sillon” (the Furrow), a movement of lay Catholics
in France who tried to reconcile their faith with their commitment to
democracy and social reform (only to be condemned by the Vatican).
In 1909 Maurin had immigrated to North America. He had spent
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin 149
many years tramping around the country, engaging in hard labor of

various kinds while living in poverty. All the while he was reading and
studying. Drawing on the best—mostly European—Catholic thinkers
of the time, he was devising his own synthesis in the area of Catholic
social theory.
By this time it was the heart of the Depression. Millions of people
were unemployed. Maurin believed the source of these social prob-
lems came from the separation of sociology, economics, and politics
from the gospel. In the process, society had lost any sense of the ulti-
mate, transcendent purpose of human activity. Social life had come to
be organized around the drive for production and the search for prof-
its, rather than the full development of persons. The Church, he be-
lieved, had an answer to all this, but it had failed to act on it. There
was “dynamite” in the gospels, but for the most part the clergy pre-
ferred to keep it under lock and key. What was necessary was to “blow
the lid” off that dynamite.
This was the message he was eager to share with Dorothy Day.
When she returned from her trip to Washington and found him wait-
ing in her apartment (her brother having let him in), he began at once
to speak with her about his vision, quoting from an assortment of
thinkers such as Eric Gill, Vincent McNabb, and Jacques Maritain.
Maurin had a whole program laid out, beginning with the need for a
newspaper to promote the social vision of the Church, houses of hos-
pitality to practice the works of mercy, farming communes where
“workers could become scholars and scholars could become workers.”
He had even formulated his ideas in the form of sing-songy verses,
ideal for street-corner declamation: “The world would become better
off / if people tried to become better. / And people would become
better/ if they stopped trying to become better off.”
Maurin had been preaching this message for years before finding
anyone who would take him seriously. In fact, it would be some time
before Day herself fully appreciated his ambitious vision. (And, even
then, she had to ask herself whether she really liked him.) But she was
quickly won over by his notion of starting a newspaper that would
offer solidarity with workers and a critique of the social system from
the radical perspective of the gospel. Maurin, as she later put it, had
given her “a program,” a “Catholic view of history,” broader than the
“class struggle” framework in which she had been formed. Drawing
on the lives of the saints he had shown her that it was not necessary to
wait for official permission to live by the teachings of Christ. One
150 ROBERT ELLSBERG
could begin today, with the means at hand, “building the new world
in the shell of the old.” In effect, he gave her permission to invent her
own vocation.
The Catholic Worker: Serving the Poor and Challenging Society

Five months later, on May 1, 1933, The Catholic Worker newspa-
per was launched at a Communist rally in Union Square. If Maurin
had provided the “program,” it was Day who set it in motion. The
paper was the organ of a movement based in houses of hospitality—
first in New York, and then in other parts of the country—where lay
Catholics lived in community among the poor, feeding the hungry, of-
fering shelter to the homeless. Through these works of mercy,
Catholic Workers responded to the needs of their neighbors. As
Dorothy wrote, “The mystery of the poor is this, that they are Christ,
and what we do for them we do to Him.” But through the paper and
other forms of direct action Catholic Workers also challenged the val-
ues, the structures, and the institutions that gave rise to so much
poverty and need.
In the early years of the movement the circulation of the paper
quickly swelled, as many bishops and clergy embraced Day’s model of
social activism. But over time, as her pacifist position became more
pronounced, especially during World War II, she was increasingly rel-
egated to a marginal position in the Church. In the 1950s she was ar-
rested numerous times for protests against nuclear weapons. During
the years that followed she was outspoken in her opposition to the
Vietnam War, her support for the civil rights movement, and her soli-
darity with the United Farmworkers Union. By that time opinion had
begun to shift; if she was still regarded warily by many in the Church,
she had been embraced as grandmother to a new generation of peace-
makers and social activists.
Dorothy Day died in 1980 at the age of eighty-three. Peter Mau-
rin had long since passed from the scene—having died in 1949 after
several years of infirmity.
Commenting in Commonweal, David O’Brien called Day “the
most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of
American Catholicism.” It was an extraordinary statement on behalf of
someone who had occupied no official position of authority, and
whose views, after all, had met with widespread rejection throughout
most of her career. In 2000 the Archdiocese of New York proposed
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin 151
Dorothy Day for canonization—the recognition that there is a kind of

authority in the Church that has nothing to do with office or contem-
porary popularity.
On an obvious level, Day and Maurin did more than almost any-
one in America to promote awareness of the social dimension of the
gospel. This went beyond propagating traditional “Catholic social
teaching.” In effect, they anticipated themes that would not form part
of official teaching for decades to come: the principle of solidarity, the
preferential option for the poor, concern for ecology, a “seamless gar-
ment” approach to the protection of life, an emphasis on gospel non-
violence. Building on the best Catholic thinking of the time, they also
advanced themes that would not be widely embraced by the Church
until Vatican II: the role of the laity, the priority of conscience, ecu-
menical dialogue, liturgical reform, the return to scripture.
In accepting Dorothy Day’s cause for canonization, the Vatican
has recognized her importance as a model of holiness for our time. In
fact, one of her constant themes was that we are all, as Christians,
called to be saints. But she preferred to deflect attention to her holy
mentor, Peter Maurin—another “St. Francis” for our time. She called
him “most truly the founder of the Catholic Worker movement . . . He
opened our minds to great horizons, he gave us a vision.” Whether he
was truly the founder of the Catholic Worker, he will always be re-
membered as the true founder of Dorothy Day.
30
Mary Luke Tobin, S.L.

About Her Father’s/Mother’s Business
THERESA KANE, R.S.M.
Sister Mary Luke Tobin was a woman who lived her entire life in
the twentieth century; Mary Luke was, however, a woman whose
spirit, vision, energy, and enthusiasm for life and its future qualified
her fully as a Twenty-First Century Woman!
Ruth Tobin was born May 16, 1908, in Denver, Colorado. She
was educated in Denver public elementary and high schools. After two
years at Loretto Heights College (Denver), Tobin entered the novi-
tiate of the Sisters of Loretto in Nerinx, Kentucky. At her reception
into the congregation, she received the name Mary Luke.
She served for some years as principal in several Loretto high schools
when, in 1952, she was elected to the general council of the Sisters of
Loretto. In 1958 she was elected superior general, in which position she
served two six-year terms. From 1964 to 1967 Sister Mary Luke was
president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Women (now the
Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR). As leader of
women religious in the United States at the time of Vatican II, Sister
Mary Luke was invited to the last two sessions of the council. She was
one of fifteen women auditors. Later, drawing upon her early friendship
with Thomas Merton during her years at the motherhouse in Kentucky
not far from Gethsemani, she directed the Thomas Merton Center in
152
Mary Luke Tobin, S.L. 153
Denver until 1995. Throughout her years she championed issues of

peace and justice, including the dismantling of racism, women’s rights,
and abolition of the death penalty. She died on August 24, 2006.
Spokeswoman for Vatican II

I first met Mary Luke in the late 1960s and early 1970s when she
and Ann Patrick Ware, also a Sister of Loretto, took up residence in
New York City to engage in ecumenical work with Church Women
United and the National Council of Churches. By the mid-to-late
1980s, a number of religious communities of women would broaden
their ministries to include work with other Christians and interfaith
groups and to establish a presence as a non-governmental organization
at the United Nations. However, in the late 1960s, it was a creative
and visionary step for the Sisters of Loretto and for Mary Luke to take
almost immediately at the conclusion of the Vatican Council II. No
doubt, such a step was related to the fact that she had been a most ac-
tive and engaged observer at the council’s second session.
Mary Luke was, without a doubt, a passionate and vibrant Vatican II
spokeswoman at the council. Although the very few women who were
present were prohibited from speaking publicly in the general assembly,
they were allowed to participate in working committee sessions. Mary
Luke never missed a session or an opportunity for dialogue at the gath-
erings on the concilar document, The Church in the Modern World.
Mary Luke was a short woman, yet she walked with great deter-
mination. In fact, my impression of Mary Luke in the 1970s and well
even into the late 1980s is that she seemed to be always walking very
fast; maybe even a run would better describe her movements! She was
always about “her Father’s/Mother’s business.” She had much to say,
to do, and to accomplish, not for herself but for others—for our reli-
gious communities, for our church, for our society! I do not recall any
agitation or impatience; however, I sensed she had little time or appre-
ciation for slowness or indecisiveness. She was far ahead of many of
us—thinking well into the future, not only thinking ahead but actually
envisioning a future many of us were just beginning to imagine!
Woman of Fidelity
As a consequence of qualities so evident throughout her entire life,
Mary Luke was a sterling example of fidelity. When she had an idea,
154 THERESA KANE, R.S.M.
she would share and discuss it with a few significant people—if noth-
ing seemed to be an overwhelming obstacle, she would enable the idea
to develop, to unwind; then, backed by her drive and determination,
it would take on a life of its own.
In October 1979, as president of the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious, I was invited to greet Pope John Paul II at the
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on Octo-
ber 7, the last day of the pope’s first visit to the United States. There
I voiced the following words: “As women we have heard the powerful
message of our church addressing the dignity and reverence of all per-
sons. As women we have pondered these words. Our contemplation
leads us to state that the church in its struggle to be faithful to its call
for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing
the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of
the church.”
The LCWR National Board, the Executive Committee and I met
with our members throughout the fifteen regions in the following
months to relate the events and to receive members’ responses. We
also met with every cardinal in the United States before they left for
an upcoming meeting with the pope in November.
At our meetings in the fifteen regions, there seemed to be some
questions and concerns. In August 1980 we held our annual assembly
in Philadelphia. My papal greeting had been a source of much public
discourse. At the conclusion of our assembly, most though not all of
the LCWR members present were overwhelmingly positive and sup-
portive of the greeting—its style, its content, and its timing.
Now Mary Luke Tobin enters into the experience! As I was com-
pleting my leadership of the LCWR, Mary Luke approached me and
said she was initiating a conversation among the LCWR past presi-
dents and executive directors at her home in Denver, Colorado. She
was most eager for Vatican officials to realize that my greeting was rep-
resentative of the organization and supported by it, especially by its
presidents and directors. She thought such an action needed to be
taken while I was still in a leadership position.
It was her vision that we gather in prayer and in friendship, that
we share our vision of religious life and express our gratitude for our
many blessings, and that all of us simply have the opportunity to ex-
perience a wonderful time together.
Mary Luke worked very hard to organize that gathering, bringing
women from all across the United States. Most of the invitees were
Mary Luke Tobin, S.L. 155
present; we had two or three glorious days and each one of us wrote
reflections on the papal greeting. Mary Luke, with the Loretto Sisters,
was totally responsible for this Denver gathering. She then asked one
of the Loretto Sisters to write an article about the experience and re-
quest it be published in the National Catholic Reporter.
Mary Luke’s Spirit Lives On

I share this story to give an example of the powerful presence
Mary Luke was in my life and the lives of so many others. She had de-
termination, she had grit, and she certainly had endurance; she was “a
woman of substance,” to quote the title of a popular book that was
adapted for TV mini-series some years ago.
Mary Luke was vitally interested in politics and was acutely knowl-
edgeable about the realities of the political world. In the fall of 2004,
it was predicted Mary Luke would not live much longer; however, she
followed the national elections avidly and lived to see the results—
which were not to her liking! How thrilled she would have been to
have supported and voted for Barack Obama as president in 2008!
Such an election in the United States was, I am sure, not beyond her
vision or dream but how delighted she would have been to experience
such n historic American paradigm shift!
Mary Luke was an outstanding human being, an extraordinary
woman, and a zealous, devout religious—a very proud Sister of
Loretto. She was so proud of her religious order and equally proud of
the other religious orders in the United States and throughout the
world. She believed very strongly in this form of life and believed just
as strongly that radical changes had to be made for renewal to become
truly a reality—renewal at the very roots of our spirits. She was com-
mitted to creating an environment where women religious could be
adult, responsible, conscientious agents and decision-makers regard-
ing the events in their lives and no longer passive recipients of a “male
defined society and church”! Her spirit and that of many other great
religious women before us should sustain us now in these times of Vat-
ican review of our lives and ministries.
How alive Mary Luke still is in the hearts, minds, and lives of myr-
iad women religious! Mary Luke, we applaud you and we thrill to
think of our reunion with you once again some day!
31
Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.

Leadership Spanning Two Centuries
RICHARD P. MCBRIEN
There is no question in my mind that the leading Catholic educa-

tor in the pre– and post–Vatican II years has been Theodore M. Hes-
burgh, a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and for thirty-five
years president of the University of Notre Dame. More than that, he
is the twentieth century’s and the early twenty-first century’s most sig-
nificant U. S. Catholic leader, bar none, whether in religion, politics,
business, or the professions.
Ordained on June 24, 1943, he has been a major presence in the
U. S. Catholic Church and in the United States generally for much of
the pre-conciliar period and for all of the post-conciliar period thus far.
Soon after ordination, with the Second World War still raging, the
young Father Ted, as he has always preferred to be called, asked his su-
periors in the Congregation of Holy Cross if he might serve as a Navy
chaplain. But those superiors had other plans for him, and he was sent
instead to study for a doctorate in theology at the Catholic University
of America.
He would excel in his studies there, as he would excel in every-
thing else that he has done in life, but he had difficulty obtaining ap-
proval for his doctoral dissertation topic: the theology of the laity.
Some of his professors at the Catholic University regarded the topic as
not sufficiently academic.
156
Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. 157
A Man ahead of His Time
One needs to be reminded that in the early and mid-1940s the

laity were still looked upon as second-class members of the Catholic
Church. The “real” Church consisted of the hierarchy and other
clergy. Lay people were simply the beneficiaries of their teachings and
spiritual ministrations. As one cynical wag once famously put it, the
laity existed to “pay, pray, and obey.”
There was also a movement at the time known as Catholic Action.
Its strength was that it found a place for the laity in the Church. Its
weakness was that it regarded lay activity as completely dependent on
the hierarchy.
In fact, Catholic Action was defined as “the participation of the laity
in the work of the hierarchy.” The “real” work of the Church was done
by, or under the direct supervision of, the hierarchy. The laity were at
best the helpers of the bishops.
Critics twisted the definition to fit their own idea of the actual situ-
ation in the Catholic Church of that period, namely, “the interference of
the laity in the lethargy of the hierarchy.” But the young Father Ted
knew in the mid-1940s, long before it was theologically fashionable,
that there was much more to the role of the laity in the Church than
what even the Catholic Action movement allowed for, and certainly
more than the ministerial opportunities that were open to the laity at the
time afforded.
So, after something of a struggle with members of his dissertation
committee, but with the support of his dissertation director, Paulist
Father Eugene Burke, Father Hesburgh produced his theology of the
laity. So popular was the finished product that the university bookstore
could not keep printed copies in stock.
Father Hesburgh later received a request from the Vatican for a
copy of the dissertation. The young priest dutifully sent it off to Rome
but heard nothing more about it—until two decades later, when he
read the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the
Laity and recognized his ideas incorporated therein, without a single
footnote of attribution.
He had surely been ahead of his time, even ahead of the great Do-
minican theologian (later Cardinal) Yves Congar, whose book, Lay
People in the Church, became the standard work on the theology of the
laity upon its publication in 1953.
It was prescient of the young Father Hesburgh, who was destined

for such greatness in the Catholic Church and in the world community
(where he would befriend presidents, other heads of state, and popes
and cardinals alike), to have recognized at the outset of his priestly life
and ministry that priests exist for the sake of the laity, not vice versa. In-
deed, we are all laity, or people (laos in Greek) of God. As much as
Theodore Hesburgh cherished his priesthood, he realized that the fun-
damental sacrament is Baptism, not Holy Orders.
God, Country, and Notre Dame

Theodore Hesburgh rose quickly in Notre Dame’s academic and
institutional ranks, becoming chair of the Department of Theology,
executive vice president, and then in 1952 president of the University
of Notre Dame. He has always regarded his greatest achievements as
Notre Dame’s president to have been the transfer of control of the
university from his own Congregation of Holy Cross to a lay board of
trustees in 1967 and the admission of women to the university in
1972.
He also ensured the academic vitality of Catholic higher educa-
tion, both before and after Vatican II, by bringing together other lead-
ing Catholic educators in 1967 to craft the celebrated Land O’Lakes
statement that applied the principles of academic freedom and institu-
tional autonomy to all Catholic universities and colleges. His academic
outreach, however, went far beyond the shores of the United States,
particularly in his seven-year role as chair of the International Federa-
tion of Catholic Universities.
After being compelled to retire from the Notre Dame presidency
in 1987 because of age, he continued to lead an exceedingly active life
in service to the academy, his country, and the Church. He was elected
to the Board of Overseers at Harvard University—the first priest to be
so honored—and in 1994, at age 77, he became chair of the board for
two terms. He also received more than 150 honorary degrees from
various colleges and universities in the United States and around the
world.
His national stature, beyond education and the Church, is re-
flected in some sixteen U.S. presidential appointments to working
groups in such areas as the peaceful use of atomic energy, Third World
development, immigration, and civil rights. Indeed he was a charter
member and then chair of the Civil Rights Commission.
Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. 159
In July of 2000 Father Hesburgh received the Congressional Gold

Medal, the highest form of recognition that the U.S. Congress can be-
stow upon a civilian for distinguished achievements and contributions
to the nation. George Washington was the first of some 250 recipients
of the award in the nation’s entire history.
At the Congressional Gold Medal award ceremony in the Capitol
rotunda, President Bill Clinton captured the essence of Father Hes-
burgh when, after calling attention to his extraordinary contributions
to his country and to world peace, he said: “The greatest honor you’ll
ever wear around your neck is the collar of a priest.” Father Hesburgh
readily agreed, noting that the most significant day of his life was the
day of his ordination to the priesthood.
This natural leader, both inside and outside the Catholic Church,
is a man not only of extraordinary vision and a remarkable capacity to
inspire but also of confidence and hope, both of which are rooted in
his deep Catholic faith.
His daily prayer is “Come, Holy Spirit.” That prayer emanates
from his long-held conviction that it is the Holy Spirit—not the clergy,
not the bishops, not even the pope—who ultimately determines the
Church’s course in history and its final destiny.
Those who wish to preserve the best of the pre–Vatican II Church
in order to apply its spiritual assets and its wisdom to the present and
future Church need look no further than to Father Theodore M. Hes-
burgh, C.S.C., as both a model and a beacon for all of us to follow.
When the history of twentieth-century and early twenty-first-cen-
tury Catholicism is written, his name will loom large upon its pages.
CXReclaiming Part III 11/6/09 11:59 AM Page 161
III
PRACTICES
32
Questions and Answers—Again—

from the Baltimore Catechism
THOMAS H. GROOME
A Confident Faith
In Shakespeare’s opinion, “To be or not to be; that is the ques-

tion,” while the philosophers ask it as “Why is there anything and not
nothing?” The Baltimore Catechism, however, posed the ultimate
question as, “Why did God make you?” And it offered an unsurpass-
able answer: “God made me to know, love, and serve Him in this
world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
Many times when presenting on the holistic nature of Christian
faith—to know, love, and serve God, engaging head, heart, and
hands—I’ve posed this old catechism question to participants. The re-
sponse grows fainter with the years but those of a vintage to have
learned it “by heart” shout it out with confidence, to the envy of the
youngsters who never did. Perhaps that’s the best gift that the question-
and-answer catechisms gave people, the security that they “knew their
faith” and could recite its core dogmas and doctrines, sacraments and
prayers, values and ethical teachings—on cue.
As children moved along in the Baltimore Catechism, they would
memorize the attributes of God and of themselves, the paschal mys-
tery of Jesus Christ, the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, the
“marks” of the Church, the sacraments and commandments, the
163
164 THOMAS H. GROOME
corporal and spiritual works of mercy, the “last things,” and more.
And the intent was that they learn the answers not only by rote but
truly “by heart”—thus shaping their identity as Catholic Christians.
Good Memories
Surprise, surprise: I won the prize in first grade for “best in
catechism”—a portent, surely, of a lifetime in catechesis. My fondest
memory, however, is of a particular evening when my mother in-
quired, as she typically did, “What questions do you have for tomor-
row?” and I said something like “137 to 140.” Whereupon she, with-
out even opening the book, asked, “What is calumny?” I was
flabbergasted. How could she know what No. 137 asked, and, when
I stumbled through the answer, could prompt me along?
Years later, I figured it out; in my Irish village one went through
the Maynooth Catechism at least five times over the years of grade
school. I was the youngest of nine children, so this was about her
forty-fifth time to tutor the Catechism, besides having learned it her-
self. Beyond her good memory, my story makes the point that the cat-
echism gave parents the confidence to participate in the formal cate-
chesis of their children; there was a consistent set of questions to be
asked and there were clear answers to be memorized.
Brief Historical Note

Before the Protestant Reformation, most people were able to re-
cite the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and either the Apos-
tles or Nicene Creed—the latter learned by recitation at Mass. With
Reformation-era polemics, however, it became urgent for people to
know more precisely the data of their faith; claiming two or seven
sacraments could decide which side you fought on when the wars
broke out. It was Luther who created the first easy-to-memorize,
question-and-answer book and to call it The Short Catechism. It had
phenomenal success. Catholicism soon responded in kind; the two
most notable early catechisms were penned by Peter Canisius (1559,
popular in northern Europe) and by Robert Bellarmine (1598, fa-
vored in southern Europe). Many of the national catechisms that fol-
lowed were indebted to either or both of these two.
At the First Vatican Council (1869–1871), some bishops pro-
posed a universal question-and-answer catechism but the council failed
Questions and Answers 165
to reach agreement on this. Instead, it encouraged each national epis-

copacy to write its own catechism. The outcome for the American
church was The Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and En-
joined by Order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore—known sim-
ply as the Baltimore Catechism. It was first published in 1885. Cardi-
nal McCloskey of New York gave the imprimatur, and Archbishop
Gibbons of Baltimore, as apostolic delegate, gave approval (note,
however, that although official approval by Rome was requested, it
was never received). Of the Baltimore Catechism’s 421 questions and
answers, only 10 percent were original, with the rest borrowed and
primarily from Butler’s Irish Catechism—also parent to the Maynooth
Catechism that I learned as a child.
Limitations of the Baltimore Catechism

The U.S. Church is one of the most vibrant Catholic communities
in the history of the world; it stands on the shoulders of “catechism
Catholics.” As noted earlier, the Baltimore Catechism gave people secu-
rity in the knowledge of their faith and parents a user-friendly way to
participate with confidence in the formal catechesis of their children.
However, from the time it was first published, the Baltimore Cat-
echism has had its critics and rightly so; I suggest five limitations:
First, its 421 questions and answers were excessive, with many of
very limited relevance. For example, it had a whole section on what
happened to Jesus between Good Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday
morning (where did he spend his time?) as if this were of major con-
cern to people’s life in faith.
Second, its selection and presentation of topics reflected no sense
of a “hierarchy of truths” to Catholic faith, a core point of Vatican II
and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994). So, limbo and in-
dulgences are presented as if they are equal in importance to the
paschal mystery or the real presence of the Risen Christ in Eucharist.
Third, and following on, what was emphasized and neglected
could actually give a distorted understanding of the Catholic faith. For
example, there are eleven questions and answers on purgatory and
limbo and seven on indulgences, yet there is no direct question on the
meaning of Easter.
Fourth, the Baltimore Catechism pays no attention to the life and
teachings of the historical Jesus. It mentions his birth, of course, but
then skips straight to his passion and death on the cross. While its
focus on the Christ of faith is valid, its neglect of the Jesus of history
leaves a lacuna around how to live as his disciples, the core mandate of
Christian faith.
And fifth, one could know the Baltimore Catechism backwards and
forwards and yet be biblically illiterate. It taught nothing of scripture,
only occasionally citing a proof text to verify some Catholic doctrine
(e.g., the words of consecration). This oversight was borne out in a re-
ligious survey conduced among Catholics in the 1960s; the vast ma-
jority could name neither who gave the Sermon on the Mount nor the
first book of the Bible.
What to Bring with Us

The critiques notwithstanding, there is a wisdom that we Ameri-
can Catholics should bring with us from the Baltimore Catechism even
as we leave its text behind. In short: Catholic Christians should know
well and be able to recite the core formulas, symbols, and ethics of our
faith, and likewise some key Bible verses. Ideally these summaries
should be “learned by heart”—in ways that reach far beyond people’s
heads and memories to the very marrow bone of their lives. Before
moving on to make some proposals, I offer two nuances lest we sim-
ply settle again for memorizing data.
First, Catholic identity and commitment are nurtured through the
socialization of lived faith within family and community. The social sci-
ences regarding identity formation assure us of this, though most of
us know it well from our own experience. It was the shared faith that
we encountered through parents, parish, and program/school that
nurtured our own faith. The “catechism era” was itself the epitome of
such socialization in faith. People who urge a return to the Baltimore
Catechism as a panacea forget that it played only a minor role in nur-
turing people’s faith. Returning to the intentional socialization of its
era—practicing Total Community Catechesis—is much more impera-
tive than memorization.
Second, cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists now make an
empirical distinction between “explicit” and “implicit” knowledge.
The former is what people can readily remember and recall linguisti-
cally; the latter has to do with procedures and principles that people
internalize, though they might not be able to recite these on cue. I re-
cently had a student I taught twenty-five years ago return to thank me
for having changed his life. When I inquired, he could scarcely remem-
Questions and Answers 167
ber the name of the course, let alone my lecture on Aquinas’s theol-
ogy of nature and grace. And yet, he may have been telling the truth—
that I had been an instrument of God’s grace to enable him to inter-
nalize his faith. That’s the “learning outcome” that matters most in
catechesis.
A Religiously Literate Catholic

This being said, all Catholics should be “religiously literate” in
the essentials of Catholicism and be able to recall their explicit knowl-
edge as needed, whether in response to an invitation, a challenge, or
an opportunity. So, what might be some “essentials” that Catholic
Christians should be able to recite by heart? Here I make only a few
suggestions.
As dogmas and doctrines, Catholics should know a formula that
reflects the oneness and threeness of God—the Blessed Trinity; that
the one person Jesus Christ was fully divine and fully human; that his
death and resurrection were God’s definitive catalyst of salvation his-
tory; that God’s grace in Jesus continues to work through the Holy
Spirit; that the Risen Christ is truly present in the Eucharist; that the
Church is to be a sacrament of God’s reign of holiness and justice in
the world.
Regarding worship and prayer, Catholics should be able to name
the seven sacraments and have a basic knowledge of the particular
grace that each one confers; they should know the centrality of Sun-
day worship to living as a Catholic Christian; they should be able to
recite both Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, an act of contri-
tion, a grace before meals, and a morning and evening prayer.
For values and ethical teaching, Catholics should know by heart the
Ten Commandments, the great commandment of love, the Beatitudes,
the Golden Rule, the cardinal virtues, the Church’s teaching on the
sanctity of life, and the principles of the Church’s social “doctrine.”
As we renew the “linguistic literacy” of Catholics, we must honor
the intent of Vatican II to re-center the Bible in our faith. Among the
core gospel texts that we should know by heart, my list would include:
From Matthew : 7:12 (the golden rule); 22:36–40 (the great-

est commandment); 25:40 (“what you did for the least”);
26:26–28 (institution of the Eucharist); 28:18–20 (the great
commission)
From Mark: 1:13–15 (reign of God is at hand); 8: 34–35 (take

up your cross to follow Jesus); 10:43 (the greatest serves the
rest); 15:40–42 (the women at the foot of the cross)
From Luke: 1:30–35 (the Annunciation); 2:4–7 (the birth of

Jesus); 4: 16-21 (“the Spirit of Lord is upon me”); 6:27–31
(love of enemies); 24:50–53 (the Ascension)
From John: 1:14 (“Word was made flesh”); 3:16 (“God so

loved the world”); 10:10–11 (life abundant and the good
shepherd); 11:27 (Martha’s confession of faith); 14:6 (“I am
the way”); 14:34–35 (new commandment); 20:18 (resurrec-
tion confession of Mary Magdalene)
To these we should add some memorable texts from the Hebrew

Scriptures and from the rest of the New Testament. So may we bring
with us from the catechism era its commitment to linguistic literacy re-
garding both scripture and tradition.
33
Catholic Schools
Daily Faith
KAREN M. RISTAU
In the period before Vatican II, especially the 1950s, Catholics in

places like Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and large
urban cities primarily in the East and Midwest lived in an almost to-
tally Catholic world. They bought clothes from Catholic merchants,
were treated by Catholic doctors, even went to grocery stores oper-
ated by Catholic people. The parish, usually populated exclusively by
one particular nationality—Irish, Polish, German, or Italian—was the
center of their lives and every parish had a school attended by all the
Catholic children in the area. In a given location, the Catholic school
might be much larger than any public school. (In 1958, there were
nearly 300,000 students in Chicago’s Catholic schools.) Catholics
were reminded mid-summer by the pastor speaking from the pulpit
that all children were to attend the parish school, which more often
than not included a secondary school. To do otherwise was to put the
child’s immortal soul in danger. Parents for the most part accepted all
this unquestioningly.
This was not exactly my experience. I grew up in a small town in
the Midwest. Our town had a public school, a Lutheran school but
not a Lutheran high school, and a Catholic school, elementary and
secondary. I did not know if my doctor was a Catholic or where the
shopkeepers worshiped unless I saw them by chance in my church.
169
170 KAREN M. RISTAU
Mine was not an exclusively Catholic world. But the pastor of our
parish—which was comprised of Irish, Germans, Poles, and people
from a smattering of other nationalities—always made the mid-sum-
mer admonishment to send all children to the parish school. And all
the Catholic children I knew attended the parish school. Many of us
who began together in first grade (Catholic kindergartens were quite
rare—as kindergarten was still not legally required by most states)
graduated together twelve years later.
Once I was inside the school-house doors, my experience was
more like than unlike that of students in any Catholic school. Now
I was in a Catholic world. All the teachers, with rare exceptions—
mine being the football coach/homeroom teacher—were members
of a congregation of religious women. The school’s outward sign of
identity was the habit of the sisters and our uniforms, navy plaid. My
education provided me with a great deal of information about all
things Dominican—the founder, the saints of the congregation, the
meaning of the habit, and the way of life. The sisters were particu-
larly important in our lives. We knew they were more than the reg-
ular teachers one might have in a public school. We knew they gave
their lives to us to teach secular subjects that we would need to be
considered educated and to teach us about God and the Church—
absolutely essential knowledge for living in this world and in the
next!
The normal school day included daily Mass attended by the entire
student body and classroom prayers. Religion class was first memoriz-
ing and then reciting the questions and answers of the Baltimore Cat-
echism—and doing everything possible to get Sister off the lesson by
asking every preposterous question we could dream up: If your aunt
who isn’t Catholic serves hot dogs on Fridays, which is worse, to in-
sult her and make her feel bad or knowingly eat the meat?
School life included preparation for the sacraments—Penance,
First Communion and Confirmation—the latter scheduled for when-
ever the bishop could get to our parish. Recess often included a visit
to the Blessed Sacrament next door in our church. Monthly, class by
class, we went to confession; the whole school attended Stations of the
Cross during Fridays in Lent; and we crowned the Blessed Mother
during May. We were prepared to defend our Catholic faith in any sit-
uation and avoided anything that might lead us astray—entering a
Protestant church, for example, or seeing a movie condemned by the
Catholic Schools 171
Legion of Decency—but we were also busy saving others by collecting

money to buy and name a “pagan baby in Africa.”
Academic subjects were taken very seriously; effort, utmost effort
was expected. Nothing less would be tolerated because we were doing
everything—absolutely everything, including perfect Palmer penman-
ship—for the greater glory of God. The admonition “to whom much
is given, much will be expected” was a frequent and believable mantra
because each one of us knew we were being given the very best edu-
cation one could have—a Catholic education that shaped how one
would live one’s life and arrive at eternal salvation.
Fostering Faith in a New Generation

In the setting of pre–Vatican II Catholic education, the question
of Catholic identity was unknown. There was little concern about the
non-Catholic in the Catholic school nor, to my knowledge, was there
any worry over enrollment numbers. These are today’s considerations.
Catholic schools once staffed by members of religious communities
are now directed and taught mostly by lay persons or religious in sec-
ular garb. After years of content-less experimentation in the 1970, the
rote question-and-answer learning style of the Baltimore Catechism
has been replaced by an age-appropriate curriculum that presents reli-
gious content, scripture study, and activities to help the student under-
stand faith and apply it to daily life.
Today’s schools are staffed primarily by lay people (95.9%).1 They
give witness to the importance of passing on the Catholic faith in a
different way than did the members of religious congregations. While
living lives much like everyday citizens, living lives similar to those of
the students’ parents, these teachers nonetheless demonstrate their
commitment to students, to furthering both their academic and faith
development. Catholic school students still do well academically—
99.1 percent graduate from high school in four years, 97 percent go
on to post-secondary education. This high number is a credit in no
small part to the teachers—who still demand “the very best” from
students.
The parish priest—and there were usually several priests in addi-
tion to the pastor—was a familiar person to both teachers and stu-
dents in Catholic schools during the 1950s and 1960s. The pastor
was often present in the religion class to hear the students’ recitation
172 KAREN M. RISTAU
of the catechism; priests were usually present at school activities—ath-

letic events, plays, and concerts. In many places, the pastor visited
each classroom to distribute report cards. Because of the present
shortage of priests and the fact that today many priests serve more
than one parish, the role of the priest in the school has of necessity
changed.
Successful Catholic schools still enjoy the support of pastors who
appreciate the value of Catholic education. Strong endorsement has
been given by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for
Catholic education:
. . . Catholic schools afford the fullest and best opportunity to

realize the fourfold purpose of Christian education, namely to
provide an atmosphere in which the Gospel message is pro-
claimed, community in Christ is experienced, service to our
sisters and brothers is the norm, and thanksgiving and worship
of our God [are] cultivated.2
Nonetheless, some priests are less than enthusiastic about the

Catholic school, citing concerns about the cost of operations. While
no one would expect the pastor to speak about mandatory atten-
dance, especially since he also must support all programs of the
parish, convincing support from the clergy is imperative and should
be expected.
That the Catholic school system continues despite considerable
odds gives remarkable testimony to the value and success of its mis-
sion. In spite of the severe reduction in the numbers of teaching reli-
gious and the decrease in parish financial support, Catholic schools
still make up the nation’s largest private educational system. Today the
schools are less “parochial” and set apart. Serving the broader world
provides an opportunity of evangelization and witness beyond ethnic
enclaves. Learners spend their days immersed in a Catholic environ-
ment with a sense of sacramentality—knowing God in all things. Cru-
cifixes and religious art adorn classrooms, regular celebration of liturgy
and daily prayer are part of school life. While the reputation for excel-
lence cannot be taken for granted, no one is providing more affective
and intellectual development for the new immigrants—urban minori-
ties—than are Catholic schools. The schools are a demonstration of
the Church’s commitment to the underserved. Despite challenges of
Catholic Schools 173
leadership, finances, continued professional and faith development for

teachers, and disagreements of some laity with the Church, Catholic
schools provide an excellent holistic education for those who choose
them and are today an exceptional source of vitality for the Church.
Notes
1. All statistics are from Dale McDonald, P.V.B.M. and Margaret M.

Schultz, United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2007–2008
(Washington, DC: National Catholic Educational Association).
2. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Com-
mitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millen-
nium (Washington, DC: USCCB, July 2005), 1.
34
Amica Fidelis, Ora pro Nobis

Devotion to Mary
ADA MARÍA ISASI-DÍAZ
The picture shows a chubby girl dressed in a long white gown with
a shiny sash around her waist. She is wearing a veil that also reaches
her waist. The girl looks to be about ten years old. She stands as if
ready to jump into action, seriously looking beyond the photographer.
I look at myself in this picture and remember not the physical details
that the camera captured but rather the sentiments and emotions of
the moment. It was May 31 and for the second time in my life I was
a “Maid of Honor of the Virgin Mary.” Every year for the twelve years
I went to Catholic school, during the month of May, I was intent on
proving to everyone how much I loved the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Virgin Mary as Childhood Friend

The month of May provided me with the opportunity to show
everyone I was a good friend of the Blessed Virgin Mary—a most
faithful friend. The system set up by the nuns “to honor the Virgin”
was simple but powerful. The idea was to make a “sacrifice for Mary,”
because, in the pre–Vatican II spirituality of those days, “sacrifice” was
the way of showing love. The sacrifice that they asked us to make was
one they could measure: we were to keep silence at all times except
when participating in class with the teacher’s permission. This meant
174
Amica Fidelis, Ora pro Nobis 175
no talking from 8:10 AM when the class bell rang until the end of the
school day at 4:10 PM, except for the fifteen-minute mid-morning re-
cess and the lunch break. Looking back on those days I can see that
the sacrifice the nuns encouraged us to make in honor of the Virgin
Mary was also an effective pedagogical tool. The goal of the nuns was
to make us strong women, women of conviction who could make a
difference in society. Having us perfectly abide by the school rule on
silence was a way of teaching us self-control and self-discipline.
Many of the five hundred girls in the school set out every year on
May 1st to show their devotion to the Virgin Mary by becoming one
of her “Maids of Honor.” Those who kept silence perfectly were re-
warded throughout the month. Every day the whole student body
would assemble facing the graceful statue of Mary in the middle of the
school patio and we would sing and pray to Mary while a floral offer-
ing was made by the different classes in the school. On Fridays, the
school principal would call out over the loudspeaker the names of the
girls who had kept perfect silence. Each would receive a medal of Mary
hanging from a tiny silky pale blue bow, which we wore proudly on the
lapel of the school white blouse. Every week the medal would be a lit-
tle bit bigger but—and here was the catch—you could get the second-
week medal only if you had gotten the first-week medal and so forth.
However, if you had slipped and you did not get the medal, you
still had a chance of being one of the two Maids of Honor selected
from each class as the girls who had made the greatest sacrifice, not
necessarily the ones who had kept perfect silence. I received many May
medals during my twelve years in school and twice I was a Maid of
Honor of the Virgin Mary. The nuns hardly ever gave me more than
a B- in “deportment,” and at least once I got a D (a terrible stain in
my record since the passing grade in the school was C). But every year,
during May, I had an opportunity to redeem myself. I could show
them all that I was a good girl and that I loved the Virgin Mary so
much that I could keep perfect silence, and that even if I failed, I
would keep trying.
For the Love of Mary

The Virgin Mary was my friend and I proudly showed her my love
by earning those May medals. I might not manage to be disciplined
the rest of the year, but during May, for love of the Virgin Mary, I
could keep quiet. I do not remember a single year when I considered
176 ADA MARÍA ISASI-DÍAZ
giving up trying. On the contrary, year after year I would throw my-
self wholeheartedly into my May project. For me this had nothing to
do with the nuns or school rules. May was about the Virgin Mary and
me. She was a very personal friend and in times of trouble—when I
had broken some school rule or was being punished by Mamá for
fighting with my brothers and sisters or disobeying her—I always
turned to the Virgin Mary. I was always making deals with her. I would
ask her to do the impossible: “Please, could you make Mother Raphael
forget she punished me for having the back of my blouse full of scrib-
bles? Look, it you help me, I promise to say twenty Rosaries today be-
fore going to sleep.”
Of course, by the time Mamá came for me and my sisters at the
end of the school day, the principal had already called her, and on top
of my having to go to school in a dress instead of the school uniform—
which hurt me so very much besides shaming me—Mamá added her
own punishment, and I had to put on my pajamas and go to bed as
soon as I came home from school. Yet, for some reason I do not know
even today, I never got upset or angry with the Virgin Mary. On the
contrary, I was most generous in my relationship with her. For exam-
ple, when I was in distress, it never occurred to me that to say the
Rosary twenty times would take me five hours and there was no way I
could do it before falling asleep. Having failed to keep such a prom-
ise, I would seriously ask her pardon and renegotiate my promise.
“Look, Virgin Mary, I am sorry I fell asleep but you know that I am
good for what I promise. Listen, let me make it up to you. I will add
twenty more Rosaries to the eighteen I owe you from yesterday.” I
kept strict count and I remember accumulating in several years a debt
of more than fifty Rosaries!
Though undoubtedly all of this was childish, the Virgin Mary be-
came a friend forever. I trusted her unconditionally. I had no doubt
that she was as faithful to me as I was to her. I never related to her as
“mother.” I suppose because I had a very good relationship with my
mother, who loved me, valued me, and cared for me, I did not need
another mother. The Virgin Mary was my friend. Beliefs about her
being the Mother of God, her virginity, her being free from original
sin, and her being assumed into heaven body and soul at the time of
her death—all of it was irrelevant to me. None of this influenced me
in picking her as a very special friend. Mary was my friend because she
understood me, cared for me, thought I was worthwhile—she never
would give me a D in deportment! She knew I was a good girl. My
Amica Fidelis, Ora pro Nobis 177
unruliness was just a matter of my enthusiastic way of being and had

much to do with my always wanting to be involved, my being curious,
and my having a good dose of not being challenged sufficiently. Yes!
Perfect silence during May was a strong challenge and I rose up to that
occasion year after year.
Mary: My Friend in the Struggle for Justice

Years later I entered the convent, for in the 1960s there was no
other way for a Catholic girl to be involved in the ministry of the
Catholic Church. From the beginning, I struggled to fit into the
mold, to be a good nun according to the canons of that time. The fact
is that I did not succeed. Very early on, one of the nuns in charge of
formation chided me by throwing in my face my devotion to Mary.
“You say you have so much devotion to the Blessed Mother, why are
you not obedient like she was?” I was so pained by this comment. I
was also furious, furious! Later that day I went for a walk down a long
road lined with trees on both sides and surrounded by open fields be-
yond flimsy fences. I cried and cried. I do not remember praying, or
even thinking. I never really articulated it clearly, even to myself, but
from that day on I began to draw away from Mary. I felt I had to
choose between being myself and trying to imitate Mary. I knew I had
to be faithful to myself and I could not embrace the submissive Blessed
Mother who was being proposed as a model. I did not consciously
stop praying to Mary. As a matter of fact, I continued for many years
to say the Rosary every day. But for the longest time I just did not con-
fide in Mary, I did not talk to her, I did not strike any deals with her.
Years later I went to Peru as a missionary, became involved in the
then incipient liberation movement, and confirmed what I had sus-
pected all along: the message of the gospel is one of justice, not one of
obedience and submission. I still remember clearly the first day I heard
a hymn to Mary that used her words in the Magnificat. “En mi Dios,
mi Salvador, me salta el alma de gozo , pues el Santo y Poderoso, ha hecho
en mí maravillas, por ser pequeña y sencilla.” (“In my God, my Savior,
my soul leaps with joy for the Holy and Powerful One, has done mar-
vels in me because I am small and simple”). Somehow the simple
melody soothed the hurt I had been carrying for several years and I was
able once again to begin claiming my friendship with Mary. To this very
day I often sing the chorus of this song, reveling in Mary’s unbeliev-
ably truthful simplicity and humility, in her never sacrificing her mind
178 ADA MARÍA ISASI-DÍAZ
or her will. She was no malleable clay in God’s hands but a clear-headed
woman who asked questions, learned what she needed in order to make
an informed decision, and then decided for herself. “The Holy and
Powerful One has done marvels in me,” are the words the gospel puts
on her lips. She does not deny her greatness; she does not fall into any
pious self-obliteration.
Mary continues to be the friend she always was. I greet her every
morning under the invocation of Our Lady of Charity, patroness of my
birth country, Cuba. She comforts me in my disappointments and
losses. She challenges me, as only a friend can, to an ever stronger
commitment to the kingdom of God, to the familia de Dios whose
first-born she birthed and whose disciples she has always encouraged.
Mary, whose Maid of Honor I was in my growing up years, yes, she is
my friend!
35
Contraception
Conflict and Estrangement in the Recent Catholic Past
LESLIE WOODCOCK TENTLER
The American Historical Background
Catholic teaching on contraception—that no means of fertility

control is morally licit save for prolonged or periodic abstinence—is al-
most as old as the Church itself. But for long stretches of the Church’s
history, the teaching did not figure prominently in terms of pastoral
practice. As late as 1910, the American laity heard few if any sermons
in which birth control was addressed. (Mission sermons were some-
times, but only sometimes, an exception to the general rule.) Nor was
the sin of contraception usually mentioned in the printed “examina-
tions of conscience” available to those who were preparing to go to
confession, or even discussed at length in handbooks for confessors.
Contraception was simply not a topic of polite public discourse. And
apparently many priests believed that some of their immigrant parish-
ioners were ignorant of the various means of birth control. Talking
about it might inadvertently lead them into temptation.1
Matters had changed dramatically by the early 1930s. The rise of
a pro-contraception movement in the United States, something that
dated from the time of the First World War, was seen by many church
leaders as requiring a vigorous Catholic response. In the 1920s, mis-
sion preachers routinely inveighed against birth control in frank and
179
180 LESLIE WOODCOCK TENTLER
graphically condemnatory language. The Catholic press and a grow-

ing pamphlet literature denounced contraception too. Surviving evi-
dence does suggest that confessors were still quite reticent, seldom in-
terrogating penitents with regard to this particular sin and even
responding in cursory fashion when the sin was actually confessed. But
evasive strategies like these were much less common after Casti Con-
nubii, Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on Christian marriage, published in
the last days of 1930. Casti Connubii affirmed, in clear and unmistak-
able terms, the Catholic prohibition on contraception. (Interestingly,
it was the first papal encyclical to do so.) It also summoned confessors
to do battle against what the Vatican apparently regarded as wide-
spread ignorance of the teaching.
For roughly the next forty years, the teaching on contraception
stood at the heart of Catholic life and practice in the United States. This
does not mean that the teaching was universally observed. Catholic birth
rates and the testimony of confessors, not to mention common sense,
tell us that it was not. But especially in the late 1940s and the 1950s,
with a revivified economy and broad cultural support for large families,
a great many Catholics tried to live this demanding and increasingly dis-
tinctive aspect of their faith. (Most Protestant denominations made pub-
lic peace with contraception over the course of the 1930s.) Only 30 per-
cent of the married Catholics queried in a 1955 study acknowledged
ever having used a means of fertility control forbidden by their Church.
In that same year, college-educated Catholic women—particularly those
who were graduates of Catholic institutions—were among those who
had the nation’s highest birth rates, even though college education for
women nearly always correlates with low fertility.
Catholic compliance with the teaching rested in part on fear—
specifically, the fear of hell. Contraception was always a mortal sin,
motives and circumstances notwithstanding. But fear was only part of
the story. In these same years, the teaching on contraception was in-
creasingly presented to the laity in attractively personalist terms. Cou-
ples were less and less likely to hear that marital sex was potentially
dangerous, coarsening in its effects if the spouses indulged too
freely—an argument favored by clerical writers as late as the 1930s.
After 1945, and especially in the context of groups like Cana Confer-
ence and the Christian Family Movement, they learned instead that
martial sex was akin to prayer—a means of communion not just with
one’s spouse but also with God. It was meant to be joyous, sponta-
neous, and—presumably, given the analogy—frequent.
Contraception 181
The Crisis and Its Aftermath
Highly educated young Catholics were particularly grateful for

this newly positive assessment of marital sex. But, as they sooner or
later learned, the fertility of a healthy couple who, like most Americans
in the 1950s, married young made frequent sex a risky business. One
might turn after several children to the “rhythm method,” a physio-
logically plausible version of which was first publicized in the 1930s.
But rhythm nearly always required a lengthy period of abstinence
every month. Sex on a rhythm schedule was less-than-frequent and in-
evitably less-than-spontaneous. It did not much resemble the vision
implicit in the gospel according to Cana.
Other factors pressed on Catholic couples in the post-war pe-
riod, too: the expectation—new to their generation—that all their
children needed college; more exacting standards of child nurture;
even worries—again, new to their generation—about global popula-
tion growth. It was probably inevitable that the frustrations bred by
this concatenation of circumstances would eventually go public. By
1964, Catholic periodicals and even the secular press were carrying
what soon became a flood of lay criticism with regard to church teach-
ing on contraception. The rhythm method, according to many, put in-
tolerable strains on a marriage—not just physically but emotionally as
well. And because it was widely regarded as an unreliable mode of fam-
ily limitation, it was also said to endanger the well-being of children,
who might as a result of too frequent births lack adequate nurture and
education. Testimony of this sort, ubiquitous by 1966, was sufficiently
frank and theologically literate that it altered the practice of countless
confessors, not to mention the thinking of prominent moral theolo-
gians. By 1967, even quite moderate theologians were willing to call
the teaching “doubtful.” As for confessors, growing numbers either
absolved without comment when a penitent confessed to birth control
or—if their counsel was sought—advised the penitent to follow his or
her conscience.
Pope Paul VI was certainly aware of this unprecedented tide of lay
dissent. It had clearly shaped the thinking of the advisory commission
on birth control he inherited from his predecessor—Pope John XXIII
had established that commission in 1963, thereby removing the topic
of birth control from the agenda of the Second Vatican Council—and
which Paul VI had greatly enlarged. It is true that Pope Paul reaffirmed
the traditional teaching in Humanae Vitae, issued in the summer of

1968. But that encyclical also acknowledged the new lay assertiveness
in its positive language regarding marital sex and in its pastoral sympa-
thy extended to couples in hard circumstances.
Still, many laity felt in the wake of the encyclical that the pope had
not heard them. Lay dissent by the late 1960s had moved beyond
complaints that the traditional teaching was inhumanly difficult to a
moral indictment of the teaching, which more and more laity seemed
to regard as pernicious in both its assumptions and effects. Marriage is
fundamentally a sexual relationship, the lay dissenters said; sexual ex-
pression in marriage has its own integrity, to which procreation is es-
sential but of which it is only a part. We need a theology of marriage
that is grounded in our experience as Christian spouses and parents,
one that speaks to the complex realities of our lives in the world. It
must simultaneously address both respect for life and the embodied
nature of human love.
For all its pastoral sensitivity, Humanae Vitae was not congruent
with such a theology. As Garry Wills has aptly noted, it ultimately
judges marriage by celibate standards.2 The “unitive” aspect of the
marital act can never stand alone, according to the encyclical; contra-
ceptive sex, in part because of its presumed frequency, was described
as undermining a husband’s respect for his wife; periodic abstinence
was said to have beneficial effects not just on a couple’s relationship
but also the emotional climate of the home. Such assertions were for
a great many laity not only demonstrably false but morally mischie-
vous. Even the pope’s justifiable worries about the negative social ef-
fects of the contraceptive revolution—worries that nearly all Catholic
parents shared—could not win assent for Humanae Vitae among most
American laity, 54 percent of whom told Gallup’s pollsters in August
1968 that they disagreed with the encyclical. Only 28 percent of those
polled were willing to give it their assent.3
A good many priests disagreed with the encyclical, too—about
half of them by 1970, according to Andrew Greeley.4 And even those
who supported the pope were often reluctant to enforce the teaching,
either in the pulpit or in the confessional. Why risk further alienating
an already prickly laity? It did not help that fewer and fewer penitents
were frequenting confession, a trend that seems to have first been ev-
ident in 1966 but which accelerated sharply after Humanae Vitae. Nor
were the laity generally disposed to consult the clergy about contra-
ception in other settings. Having made up their minds on the matter,
Contraception 183
they now kept their counsel. With an initial sense of relief, the clergy
did too. Even liberal priests were not eager to be flagged as dissenters
on an issue that had evident staying power in Rome.
Thus, shortly after Humanae Vitae, public silence descended on
the subject of contraception. Moral theologians turned to what they
frankly regarded as more interesting matters. Having issued a com-
promise statement in support of Humanae Vitae, the American hier-
archy was largely silent too. The silence did buy breathing room—a
space in which angry laity might make their personal peace with the
Church. But at a very high cost. The enduring silence on Humanae
Vitae—and that is what has prevailed, despite occasional iterations of
its central prohibition—means that Catholics since the 1970s have
formed their consciences on matters sexual without much input from
their Church. How could it be otherwise, given that their clergy have
been so effectively muzzled? If one can’t speak honestly about con-
traception in terms that the laity regard as moral, one can’t really talk
about sex at all.
Wisdom from a Conflicted Past

What, if anything, can we retrieve from so widely discredited a
teaching? (Adjusting for income and education, Catholic contracep-
tive use has long been indistinguishable from that of other Americans.)
We obviously don’t want to return to the rigid, act-centered moral
theology in which the teaching was embedded. Motives and circum-
stances do matter. Nor do we want to infuse married life with the guilt
and tension the teaching often gave rise to. But that teaching, what-
ever its inadequacies, did embody a high moral seriousness about sex.
It made clear that sex is in fact a “life issue”—that whatever its role in
enhancing a couple’s relationship or indeed in making life pleasurable,
sex is most fundamentally the means by which human life is transmit-
ted. A truly Christian sexual ethic must take this reality into account.
Back in the mid-1960s, when the intra-Catholic debate over con-
traception was at its height, lay Catholics often spoke in terms of a re-
newed theology of marriage. Marriage is our principal route to sanc-
tity, they argued. We have learned from our own experience and
indeed from our Church that joyous sexual communion is essential to
the growth of marital love and hence, quite literally, to our salvation.
Perhaps this truth might best be expressed—and this was a widely
popular formulation—by insisting that every marriage, rather than
every sexual act, must be open to conception. Children are indeed

gifts from God, to paraphrase the argument. But spouses are also gifts
to each other.
The conversation just described did not address today’s most con-
tested questions. No one spoke about non-marital sex, much less ho-
mosexuality. Nonetheless, that conversation is a model for us in two
important ways: first, because it was a conversation—made possible by
the honesty of all parties to it and their willingness to listen and learn;
and second, because all participants accepted as a fundamental prem-
ise that the Christian tradition possesses enduring wisdom with regard
to sex. Can we revive such a conversation in our own time? That, it
seems to me, is one of the most important questions facing today’s
Church.
Notes
1. Information in this and the following paragraphs comes from my

Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2004).
2. Garry Wills, Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Reli-
gion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1972), 186.
3. Figures quoted in Maurice J. Moore, “Death of a Dogma? The Amer-
ican Catholic Clergy’s Views of Contraception” (PhD dissertation., Department
of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1972), 19.
4. Andrew M. Greeley, The Catholic Priest in the United States: Sociolog-
ical Investigations (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference,
1972), 106.
36
The Last Sacrament

From Extreme Unction to the Anointing of the Sick
WILLIAM MADGES
Extreme Unction was the name Catholics used prior to the Sec-
ond Vatican Council to refer to what today is called the sacrament of
the Anointing of the Sick. As the name “Extreme Unction” suggests,
this sacrament involved a final anointing before death; for this reason,
it was also called “last rites” or “the sacrament of the dying.” My first
experience with this pre–Vatican II ritual of the sacrament was also my
most personal.
In the early morning hours of June 30, 1956, our house in De-
troit was astir with anxious activity. A siren blared outside, signaling
the arrival of the Fire Department’s Rescue Squad. They had been
called because my father had suddenly been stricken ill. At the time,
we did not know what the problem was. My father Mike had awak-
ened with a very stiff neck. In response to his complaint, my mother
Mary went quickly to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to retrieve
a tube of Ben-Gay, thinking that his neck was stiff from the hot and
physical work of loading and unloading the ovens at the Silvercup Bak-
ing Company. As my mother rubbed the ointment into his neck, he let
out a groan and his head slumped back against the headboard of their
bed. My mother quickly determined that he was unconscious.
At about the time the firefighters arrived, our parish priest, Father
Szelc, rang the doorbell. We lived on the second floor of a two-family
185
186 WILLIAM MADGES
house, which we shared with my aunt and uncle. At the time, I was
three-and-a-half years old. I don’t recall who greeted Father Szelc at
the door, but I do remember how he was welcomed. Either my
mother or my aunt met our parish priest at the door with a lit candle.
The “sick kit,” consisting of two candles and a crucifix, had already
been set up in the bedroom within sight of my parents’ bed. This was
standard procedure when someone was taken gravely ill at home and
a priest had been summoned to administer Extreme Unction. After a
few quick words spoken in an attempt to reassure my mother, Father
Szelc came upstairs, entered the bedroom, approached my father’s
prone form, and began the rite of Extreme Unction.
Because of my age, I did not understand what was taking place. I
did not know what was wrong with my father and why he would not
wake up, despite the commotion in the room. All I knew was that
something serious had happened and Mom was very upset. A couple
of firefighters were in the bedroom as well. My memories of the per-
formance of the rite are quite fuzzy, but some of the graphic images
that stayed with me include the priest saying some words (I later
learned that they were prayers), sprinkling with holy water, and
anointing. When Father Szelc was finished, the firefighters quickly
loaded my father’s body onto a stretcher, carried him down the steps,
out of the house, and into the waiting red truck, whose siren started
up again as it raced away from our house.
My mother returned home in the evening, bringing with her the
very sad news that my father had died. Dead at the age of 39, killed
by a cerebral hemorrhage. Up to that point, I knew nothing of death
and I certainly had no idea what the words “cerebral hemorrhage”
meant. All I knew was that my mother had come home alone. She
constantly dabbed her eyes, as she alternated between uncontrollable
sobbing and some level of composure. I thought that Dad was sick,
but that, when he got better, he would come home.
A Suitable or a Necessary Sacrament?

As I think back to that day many decades later, I am somewhat
surprised by what I do remember. The images of our parish priest, the
lit candles, the somber procession of the priest into my parents’ bed-
room, and the “strange” ritual of sprinkling and rubbing oil on my fa-
ther are all extant in my memory.
The Last Sacrament 187
Because Dad was already unconscious, Father Szelc did not hear
his confession nor did he give him “Viaticum,” that is, Holy Commu-
nion, which, as the Latin word suggests, was intended to be “food for
the journey” from this life to the next.
What was done sacramentally with my father and why was it done?
How did these actions fit into the belief system and religious practice
of Catholics before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council?
Three characteristics define the belief system that undergirds the
pre–Vatican II practice of the sacrament. First, it was the sacrament
that was administered to those who had reached the end of their life,
those who were on the very threshold of death. Second, the sacrament
was desired, both by the person dying and by his or her family, because
it was intended to free the dying person of the last remnants of sin,
thus preparing him or her for entrance into the glory of heaven. In the
pre–Vatican II Church, great emphasis was placed on the need to per-
form good works to attain an increase in grace and to overcome sin.
To be in full communion with the God who is sinless, one needed to
be purged of sin. Reception of the sacraments helped one to achieve
this end. Third, the rite of Extreme Unction occurred usually in the
company of one’s immediate family or closest relatives. As a person de-
parted from this life, he or she naturally wanted to be encircled by the
love of family.
With the changes effected by the Second Vatican Council, those
three characteristics were modified. First, the sacrament is no longer
regarded as appropriate only for those who are at the point of death.
According to the new rite, the sacrament should be administered to
anyone who is seriously ill. This shift is reflected in the change of the
sacrament’s name from Extreme Unction or the sacrament of the
dying to the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. This sacrament
can be administered to those who are about to undergo surgery and it
can be received more than once during the same illness. Second, the
new rite exhibits a more holistic understanding of the person who re-
ceives it and, concomitantly, a more holistic understanding of the
sacrament itself. The prayer for blessing the oil in the new rite (no. 75)
prays that the person receiving it may “be freed from pain, illness, and
disease and made well again in body, mind, and soul.”1 By contrast, in
the pre–Vatican II era it was the penitential-spiritual aspect of the
sacrament that was almost exclusively emphasized. Third, the context
in which the sacrament is administered today has expanded from a
188 WILLIAM MADGES
tightly familial to a more broadly communal context. As Vatican II’s

Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) states,
liturgical services are not private functions, but are “celebrations of the
Church.” Consequently, whenever rites make provision for communal
celebration involving the active participation of the faithful, this way
of celebrating is to be preferred to a celebration that is individual and
quasi-private.2
Retrieval or Rejection?
Is there anything in the pre–Vatican II experience of the sacrament
that ought to be retained? Or should much or all of that previous rite
be rejected? A salutary development that occurred with the Second
Vatican Council was the attempt to regain balance in understanding
the purposes of this sacrament. Although the penitential aspect of the
sacrament should be retained today, the earlier rite’s overemphasis
upon the gravity of sin needs to be rejected. The consciousness of sin
and of the need for forgiveness needs to be balanced with an affirma-
tion of faith in God’s mercy. Moreover, the prayer for the remission of
sin needs to be augmented with a prayer for strength and healing, in
body as well as in soul. The Second Vatican Council sought to restore
a balance between the spiritual and the physical, the heavenly and the
earthly. Consequently, the current rite is more holistic and therefore
more appropriate, not only to our context today, but also to the early
history of the Church when the anointing was administered to the
sick, not simply the dying, and when there was prayer for healing in
body as well as soul.3
Another aspect of the pre–Vatican II rite that can be retained is an
appreciation of the power of the sacrament in bringing solace and
comfort not only to those who receive it but also to their families and
loved ones. In the twentieth century prior to the Second Vatican
Council, Catholics often carried cards in their wallets or wore medals
around their necks that stated “I am a Catholic. In the event of an
emergency, call a priest.” These cards were meant to help ensure that
emergency personnel or police officers would call a priest to adminis-
ter Extreme Unction to the Catholic in need. Few Catholics today
carry such a card or wear such a medal. I think that this is an indica-
tion that, in the pre–Vatican II Church, there was a much stronger
sense of the “necessity” of the sacrament in bringing appropriate clo-
sure to this life. This sense of the sacrament’s importance, an appreci-
The Last Sacrament 189
ation of the psychological as well as the religious benefits of the sacra-

ment in preparing the recipient to face serious illness or death with
strength and hope, are features of the pre–Vatican II rite that can be
meaningfully retrieved. If that appreciation is joined to Vatican II’s un-
derstanding of the grace conferred in sacraments, not as a thing but as
a gracious encounter with the divine Spirit through Christ, then this
sacrament of the sick can become a powerful and effective symbol of
God’s love. “Christ” means “the Anointed One.” For the person of
faith, then, receiving the anointing with oil can be a powerful experi-
ence of feeling the healing touch and loving embrace of Christ and the
Christian community.4 In times of serious illness, such a feeling is most
welcome.
Notes
1. Anointing and Pastoral Care of the Sick: Commentary on the Rite for
the Anointing and Pastoral Care of the Sick (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic
Conference, 1973), 22.
2. Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, nos. 26
and 27, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., ed. Norman P. Tanner
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:826.
3. James L. Empereur, Prophetic Anointing: God’s Call to the Sick, the El-
derly, and the Dying (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1982), 25–64.
Anointing and Pastoral Care of the Sick, 18–21.
4. Peter E. Fink, “Anointing of the Sick and the Forgiveness of Sins,” in
Recovering the Riches of Anointing: A Study of the Sacrament of the Sick (Col-
legeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 27–33.
37
All the Angels and Saints

What Happened to Them?
DOLORES R. LECKEY
During the years of my growing up Catholic in the pre–Vatican II

period, the first part of the Mass almost always included a short, but
to my mind, powerful prayer: the Confiteor. It was prayed in Latin but
my missal had a translation. A more recent post–Vatican II translation
(1973, ICEL) is as follows:
I confess to almighty God,

and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do;
and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,
all the angels and saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
As a child I focused on the unseen but very real presence of angels

and saints. It was important to me, especially since I lived in an urban
setting with parents who were older (and so in my mind, closer to
death) and with brothers who were serving in World War II. In the
midst of all this uncertainty I could reach out to the spirit-world for
help, guidance, solace.
190
All the Angels and Saints 191
Angels
Like most Catholic children, I learned at an early age the prayer to

my guardian angel.
Angel of God, my guardian dear,

to whom God’s love commits me here,
ever this day be at my side,
to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen
We were taught that we each had our own angel who was very
close at hand.
At some point I reasoned that if I could ask my angel for help of
all kinds I could also pray to my endangered brothers’ angels who
were with them in the war zones. The invisible angelic guardians were
a source of comfort during the years of my childhood.
As I moved into adulthood, and with a certain amount of expo-
sure to theology, the angelic world grew more remote to me. My ex-
perience is to a certain extent reflected in the four paintings of the
American artist Thomas Cole called “Stages of a Man’s Life.” The
paintings are in a permanent exhibit at The National Gallery of Art in
Washington D.C.
In the first painting a young boy is in a boat, setting out from
shore, and close by an angel keeps watch. This is the “childhood”
painting. The second painting is “adolescence,” with the angel more
distant from the young man. In the third stage, “adulthood,” the
angel is barely visible, far from the boat, on the margins of the man’s
life. Finally in the fourth painting, “old age,” the angel is once again
a close companion.
Guardian angels returned to prominence in my own life when I had
children. During one of the sessions of the Second Vatican Council,
word came to Washington from Rome that the words of absolution in
the sacrament of Penance—traditionally in Latin—could now be said in
the vernacular, in this case, English. However, when I arrived at the
confessional I learned that the priest was a visiting German Franciscan,
and while the absolution was in his language (German), his exhortation
to me was in strained and hesitant English. Still, I understood the
meaning. He told me to develop a devotion to my children’s guardian
angels, casting that in terms of the greatest gift I could give them. I
192 DOLORES R. LECKEY
received those German-English words with seriousness and gratitude.

Guardian angels were back in my life—at least for my kids.
With the Second Vatican Council urging Catholics to read and re-
flect on the Bible, a more scriptural presentation of the celestial world
was available. We encountered the archangels, messengers from God
who often appeared in human guise urging biblical characters, and by
extension us, not to be afraid. The message, in its essence, was (and is)
to trust God and to trust the inner word that reverberates in all of us.
We are told to extend hospitality to strangers because many have en-
tertained angels in such gracious outreaches.
Over the years I have come to appreciate the archangels Gabriel
and Raphael in their difficult assignments. The repercussions of
Gabriel’s encounter with Mary of Nazareth continue to this day. Every-
thing that we as Catholic Christians believe is linked to that moment
when Gabriel announced God’s plan for Mary, and for the world.
And Raphael’s task, that of accompanying Tobias on a perilous
journey and facilitating his eventual marriage to Sarah (a love story full
of suspense and mystery), is deserving of admiration. Surely the value
of perseverance in matters of love is demonstrated in this story.
I have sometimes wondered if all our prayers to Michael the
archangel, prayers that in pre–Vatican II years we said at the end of
every Mass did, indeed, move Communist Russia to a form of conver-
sion. Might the archangels be called upon today to help our broken
world heal and achieve some modicum of peace?
As great emissaries of God, could Raphael walk through Gaza?
Gabriel linger awhile in Jerusalem? Michael hold back forces bent on
war? Why not?
Saints
Saints shared my childhood world as well. My first experience of
answered prayer occurred when I was eleven years old. I had been in-
troduced to Mary’s title Our Lady of Good Counsel in religion class
where it had been explained that Mary can guide us to solve problems
that are upsetting. I had a problem and was very upset. The problem
was jealousy. I was jealous of the attention that a favorite nun was
showing to another student. I reacted by withdrawing from all contact
with the nun and the student (thus engaging in what I can recognize
now as passive/aggressive behavior), and as a result I was disconsolate
and inwardly agitated. One evening, in desperation, I fell to my knees
All the Angels and Saints 193
and asked Our Lady of Good Counsel what I should do. Before long
I stopped crying because I had a clear idea of what was needed. An
apology. I would apologize to Sister. The decision to do so brought
peace and the act itself deepened the peace. Mary, first among the
saints, led me to needed action. And today, Mary is my doorway to the
communion of saints.
My childhood bedroom housed a collection of plaster statues of
saints who stood watch on my dresser, knowing and wise. I was happy
to have St. Anthony there, because he could help me find lost things,
and Joseph, whom I knew to be the patron of a happy death (but I
didn’t want to think about that too much). One of my favorites was
Thérèse of Lisieux who taught how little acts of care and responsibil-
ity (for example, picking up after oneself) could lead to sainthood. St.
Thérèse’s doctrine of “the little way” was a relief to me because as I
grew older I knew that I did not want to emulate the idiosyncratic be-
haviors of many saints (such as St. Francis of Assisi’s taking off all his
clothes in the public square to make a point with his father). My non-
Catholic friends were enchanted to learn that we Catholics have a pa-
tron saint for every need: St. Genesius for stage jitters and other the-
ater-related problems; St. Appolonius for courage when facing the
dentist; St. Dorothy for eye problems; St. Brendan for the protection
of sailors—and on and on, into eternity.
Communion of Saints
In recent years there has been expanded theological reflection on
the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints. Dr. Elizabeth
Johnson, C.S.J., is in the forefront of this particular area of study.1
I have recently written about my own personal experience of the
communion of saints in the context of Vespers (the evening prayer of
the Church), which I prayed regularly following the death of my hus-
band. My major discovery was that I was not alone. I wrote:
In these times of prayer, the communion of saints, a corner-

stone of Catholic belief, enshrined in Christian creeds, became
palpable. Traditionally the communion of saints referred to the
dead only. The communion I experienced included not only
my husband, but friends, public figures, culture in its many
forms, and the social contexts in which we all live. The differ-
ence between loneliness and aloneness took on a new clarity as
194 DOLORES R. LECKEY
my life experience expanded into communion. I began to

probe the meaning of resurrection, our resurrection . . .
and
Whom do we count in the communion of saints? Surely the

canonical saints, and surely our own beloved dead, all of them
silently moving in and out of our daily lives. But there are the
living, too. Known and unknown to us personally are those
whose simple, ordinary lives give glory to God.2
The Catholic symbol of the communion of the saints reflects the

conviction that the bond of Baptism is never broken, not even by
death. So, those now in the eternal presence of God can continue to
intercede for us.
Angels and Saints Today

What, then, has happened to all the angels and saints? They are
where they have always been, in the horizon of our personal and pub-
lic worlds, an ever-expanding cloud of witnesses. These friends of God
exercise a watchful love and, representing God’s effective love for us
in the everyday, encourage us to trust in God. They inspire us to pur-
poseful lives, not in the context of first century Palestine or Asia
Minor, but in this time and in many diverse places and cultures. Their
presence is a blessing. Deo gratias.
Notes
1. Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New

York: Continuum, 2003)
2. Grieving with Grace (Cincinnati, Ohio: St. Anthony Messenger Press,
2008).
38
Catholic Eucharist, before and after Vatican II
RICHARD ROHR, O.F.M.
“Lord, I Am Not Worthy to Receive You”
When I was growing up in the 1940and 1950s in Kansas, I think

you could say that “going to Mass” and being a Roman Catholic were
pretty much the same thing. Everything seemed to circle around
when, where, how much, if, and how worthily you “attended Mass.”
You could perhaps call it religion as “attendance” and preparation for
attendance. The Eucharist gave us our corporate, spiritual, and social
identity, and did it quite well on many levels. It rightly said that true
religion was about “going to Communion”.
Lines formed outside confessionals on Saturday afternoons and
even before weekday Masses to prepare us to “receive in the state of
grace.” Fasting was strictly observed from midnight, so Masses were
usually early in the morning for those who wished to communicate. I
remember when the Monsignor yelled at me for drinking from the
school water fountain, and said “I better not see you in the commun-
ion line!” I was rightly shamed. There was no wine for anyone but the
priest in those days. All was done in silence except for the reverent
murmuring of the priest and the organ songs that we listened to in
the background. It was actually quite contemplative or at least pleas-
ing to introverts.
Coming in and going out anonymously and quietly was almost
considered part of the reverence. You came for God and not for
195
196 RICHARD ROHR, O.F.M.
community. Most of the Eucharist’s transformative work seems to

have been at the subliminal level; the medium was the message, with
no great emphasis on sermon or lectionary, adult education, or per-
sonal involvement with the parish beyond offering the Sunday “enve-
lope.” The priests were the ministers, nobody else. It was definitely
the “mystical” Body of Christ. But believe it or not, it kept the edges
of Catholic identity “hot,” clear, and even vibrant for many. The
power of agreed-upon and shared ritual is far more powerful than
most people realize.
Many—if not most—moral obligations and spiritual teaching were
largely tied up with worthiness to receive Communion or not, and at-
tendance at Sunday Mass was one of the six “commandments of the
Church.” So well taught was this commandment that most confessors
to this day would find “missing Mass on Sunday or a holy day” the
number-one sin confessed. We were required to actually go to Com-
munion only once a year, however, and that during the Easter Time.
No one told us that there were at least fifteen other “rites” of the
Mass, fully honored by Rome. It was a bit of chosen ignorance and ar-
rogance on the part of the Latin Rite, and still a source of insult to
many groups from Maronite to Malabar Catholic traditions.
Transcendent Catholicism
The repetitious and routine words of the Mass (only one Eucharis-
tic Prayer was known) in a foreign “sacred” language lent it a profound
sense of an otherworldly mystery that we were privileged to observe,
“understand,” and enjoy. While it kept us grounded, it also allowed us
to remain largely “unconscious” as to any specific mission or message
beyond “keep coming back.” Only the feasts and seasons changed—
but not the substance or the words of the Mass. The colors of the vest-
ments, the readings from a single cycle, the number of candles, the feast
day variations were all anticipated by the fervent, often by nine days of
preparation, called novenas; major feasts were anticipated by vigils or
vespers. This gave many of us a sense of the eternal, the cyclical, and
the calming that comes from order and definition. The priest and his
role in the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine into the Body
and Blood of Jesus Christ created a personal and corporate axis mundi,
an objective center for everything Catholic. Our hierarchical figures
held us together as one. The priest dressed differently and didn’t marry;
lots of us fully believed that he was almost metaphysically different.
Catholic Eucharist 197
“This is the day we bless the throats, this is the day of the May
Crowning, this is the parish feast day, these are the ‘Rogation Days,’
this is when we process through the streets displaying the Blessed Eu-
charist.” We knew these days and traditions by heart, and we looked
forward to them, almost as if they defined the very nature of the cos-
mos. On this day or that, special graces were granted as on no other
day, because of this patron, this promise, this indulgence, this shrine.
It all created immense and immediate expectation—now, here,
today—this is the day of salvation (an expectation we seem to have
lost). Rituals, repetition, and remembrances such as these work at pro-
found levels in human consciousness.
The Mass held us together inside of a “numinous” world and also
somehow inside of ourselves. It gave a sacred meaning to most human
suffering. It created a Catholic people that transcended nationality and
race and century. Transcendence was made available in a way that no
one doubted. The vertical line of salvation was very clear; not so
much, however, the horizontal. Ironically we did not talk about Jesus
that much, or even his practical teaching. The common phrases were
“Our Blessed Lord,” “The Lord,” “Christ,” or “Our Lord and Sav-
ior.” It was a pretty formal and awesome relationship we had, nothing
too personal or active, except for some pious types.
In most places religion appeared to be more a civil matter than an
encounter with the living Jesus. Jesus’ concerns for peacemaking, hu-
mility, a simple life style, and present-day healing were not high on our
list (in terms of healing, “Extreme Unction” was enough). Jesus was
surely more in the Eucharist than in us. The Eucharist was the “true
body,” corpus verum; people were merely the corpus mysticum. This
was a strange transposition if you believe that the Eucharist is to feed
the people and not the other way around.
I was a fervent altar boy in 1950s Topeka and rose early to ride my
bike to the church that faced the Kansas capitol building. Like all altar
boys of that time, I knew my role, gestures, and prayers perfectly, and
would not have thought of being late or bothering Father or talking
loudly in the sacristy. As soon as we rang the sanctuary bell, the well-
trained organist began the same “Introit” to the same Mass formula (on
almost all days except first class feasts): the Requiem Mass. We ordinar-
ily set out the black vestments for Father, because much of our concern
was rescuing the poor souls from purgatory. Without exaggeration, the
typical parish had become a funeral society showing more daily concern
for praying for the dead than healing the living.
198 RICHARD ROHR, O.F.M.
Some parts of the country actually had separate Eucharists and

churches for the different ethnic groups, especially blacks and Mexi-
cans. I recently heard of one church in Colorado where the Anglos sat
in the center pews and the Mexicans on the sides as late as the 1960s.
It makes one wonder how effective the Eucharist was in changing so-
ciety beyond its message of personal salvation.
Mystification or Mystery?
So what was lost and what was gained by the liturgical reforms of
the Vatican II? I think we lost community as a free and solid given.
Today we “create” community by choice, study, action, or conversa-
tion, and not totally by the rituals. We also lost any strong sense of
group identity, which was very effectively maintained by uniform prac-
tices and agreements. Now Catholic community and identity are much
more fluid, fragile, and voluntary.
The most common phrase among critics is that as a result of the
liturgical reforms of Vatican II we lost a sense of “mystery.” I both
agree and disagree with that observation. I do think we lost a sense of
worshipful and pregnant silence. We also share in America’s general
disrespect for most authority and for tradition. This is a major regres-
sion, it seems to me.
Mostly, however, we let go of a sense of mystification, but not nec-
essarily real religious Mystery. Mystification is actually a non-experience
of Great Mystery and the disillusionment that follows from this non-expe-
rience. Holy Mystery elicits a strong sense of inner clarity, direction,
enlightenment, and invitation to it. It calls forth intellectual curiosity
and spiritual searching and study, not glib or smug certitudes. Engag-
ing with True Mystery is not a matter of loving amorphous belief sys-
tems or obscure traditions onto which we can project anything we
want. Rather, Holy Mystery calls forth inner accountability and re-
sponsibility for what we have actually experienced. For example, it is
inconceivable that Eucharist truthfully experienced would allow one
to be a racist. Yet rampant racism remained quite common among
communicants in most Catholic countries I have visited. Mystification
has to do with pseudo mystery and may be even the opposite of en-
counter with True Mystery. I think we have more Mystery now, and
much less mystification.
The idealized silence, the non dialogue, the obscure symbols (dis-
connected to any narrative), the anonymous saints’ lives (nothing be-
Catholic Eucharist 199
yond a name and a legend), the prohibition of questioning authority—

all sent everything underground. It allowed most peoples’ unconscious
and personal ego or cultural assumptions to set the actual direction and
avoid any clear or shareable meaning at all (note that to this day
Catholics are generally reticent to talk about their inner life or their re-
lationship with God). The de facto value systems of most Catholics
have been indistinguishable from those of most other Americans, ex-
cept on a couple of hot button issues, usually having to do with sexu-
ality or Mass attendance itself.
We became good at denial and repression of what we really believed,
really felt, and really experienced. There was a giant cover available for
not being in touch with our inner life and our actual belief systems. It
seems there is a silence that is deeper consciousness and there is a silence
that is merely unconsciousness. It probably was true religious Mystery for
people with sincere prayer and inner lives, but for many of us it was
mystification. I admit that even mystification held us fast inside of a cer-
tain salutary container. We could probably use that holding tank now,
as we have become cynical and skeptical about any meaning at all. I can
even see why some want to go back to the “good old days.”
Today’s Eucharist, yes overly chatty sometimes and even trivial,
still hopefully includes a preached Gospel on a triple-cycle lectionary
in understandable language, and is based much more in actual com-
munity relationships. No more “God without God’s world,” no more
vertical priestcraft without a horizontal Body of Christ, no more mys-
tification substituting for mystical union with God and all that God
loves. A Eucharist that is both “vertical and horizontal” tells us that
the Christian religion has an actual and accountable message for our
lives and for society. It is now much more a transformational system
than merely a belonging system or an external belief system.
Encounter with Holy Mystery always makes one humble and
keeps one seeking and searching for the Ever More of that enticing
Mystery. Authentic Eucharist allows every age to hold, learn from, and
suffer the same contradictions that Jesus held and suffered in his life
and on the cross. Such a Eucharist is both a banquet for the universe
and an exercise in sacrificial letting go in any age or time or culture. It
cannot be anything less, if it is to be true. The Eucharist is always
Jesus’ and our “one and eternal sacrifice,” and any age dare not make
it into anything either more convenient or less comforting.
39
First Confession
“Bless Me Father, for I Have Sinned”
KATE DOOLEY, O.P.
Ready to Go
In the decades before Vatican II, preparation for children’s first

confession placed great emphasis on “how to go to confession.” Chil-
dren practiced with “made up” sins, which unfortunately were often re-
peated as the actual confession. Another part of the preparation in-
cluded taking the children to the church in order to become familiar
with the space, the sliding panel, and the darkness of the confessional.
Children were usually given a very detailed set of instructions to mem-
orize, instructions that took absolutely nothing for granted. The hand-
out began with: “I go into the confessional and kneel down. When the
priest opens the slide, I make the sign of the cross and I say, “Bless me
Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession. My sins are . . .”
The story is told of one teacher, kneeling near the confessional,
hearing a child repeat the wording of the handout as far as “When the
priest opens the slide . . .” Then the child, in her anxiety not remem-
bering what came next, began repeating “When the priest opens the
slide” louder and louder. The confessor gently said, “Yes, go on,” and
finally in a firm voice said, “The slide IS open!” The child, who by this
time was quite agitated, replied in a loud voice: “Well close it, so I can
start over!”
200
First Confession 201
Primary teachers of the pre–Vatican II era had an abundance of

amusing stories about first confession. For children, the experience of
first confession was one that more often than not generated fear and
anxiety.
The Baltimore Catechism or material based on it was the primary
source of preparation for the sacrament. Simple line drawings aug-
mented the printed text. The illustration of a hand was a means of re-
membering the five things necessary for a good confession: to exam-
ine one’s conscience (thumb); to be sorry for one’s sins (index finger);
to resolve not to sin again (middle finger); to tell one’s sin to the priest
(fourth finger); and to remember to do the penance given by the priest
(little finger). The degrees of sinfulness were displayed by three milk
bottles: one bottle with some small black specks (venial sin); another
with many large black specks (mortal sin), and finally a bottle that was
pure white (soul in grace). A common image used to present the sacra-
ment to children was a court trial. The confessional is the judgment
seat; the confessor is the judge; the penitent is the accused; confession
of precise individual acts is the accusation; the exhortation of the priest
to the penitent is similar to the judge’s admonition; absolution is the
verdict; and penance is reparation.1 This analogy corresponded to the
understanding of sin as a violation of rules and regulations. In this
analogy, however, the image of the merciful loving God of the scrip-
tures was sometimes replaced in the child’s mind by the image of a
God seeking retribution and recompense.
Moreover, the catechism vocabulary of venial sins, mortal sins, ac-
tual sins, “falling into sin,” was more than a little confusing to young
children. Children could sometimes be heard asking each other:
“How many ‘mortals’ did you do?” One child was greatly relieved
after having been assured by his mother that the meaning of the word
“original” was something that was new or something that had not
been done before. Reciting a litany of the transgressions of his class-
mates, he knew his actions were certainly not original sins! Moreover,
since the focus was on externals, children often were confused and as-
sumed that actions that annoyed adults were sins.
The religion texts offered a guide for the examination of conscience
with simple questions that reflected the Ten Commandments: “Did I
say my prayers every day? Did I take God’s holy name in vain? Did I miss
Mass on Sunday or on a holy day? Did I misbehave in church? Was I
obedient? Did I get angry? Was I pure in touch and thought? Did I steal
anything? Did I tell lies? Did I say mean things? Did I eat meat on
202 KATE DOOLEY, O.P.
Friday?” The teacher explained the meaning of each of the command-

ments from a doctrinal perspective and then summarized by using ex-
amples from the scriptures, from the lives of the saints, or most often
from vignettes created by the teacher, stories that reflected the children’s
experience. The purpose of the sacramental preparation was not just to
prepare for first confession but to establish a lifelong practice of exam-
ining one’s conscience in order to participate with the family in the
weekly or monthly reception of the sacrament of Penance.
From Confession to Reconciliation

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), revised all of the sacra-
mental rituals, including the sacrament of Penance in 1973. Pope John
Paul II in his 1984 exhortation on Reconciliation and Penance in the
Mission of the Church described the sacrament in this way: “It is in
the light of God’s mercy and love that we examine our actions, both
the good and the bad, take responsibility for them, are sincerely sorry
and amend our life. The sign of absolution, a visible sign of God’s
faithfulness and forgiveness, completes the sacrament.”2
The revised Rite of Penance (RP) presents the sacrament as litur-
gical prayer, as an act of worship and an expression of the faith of the
Church (RP, 4). The dominant theme in the Rite of Reconciliation is
that God is the God of mercy and love. The ritual provides three forms
for the celebration of the sacrament: individual confession; communal
celebration with individual confession, and (to be used in special cir-
cumstances) a communal celebration with general absolution. The
second form of communal prayer is generally used for the children’s
first confession. The scriptures are proclaimed to affirm that it is God’s
initiative that calls us to conversion and to trust in God’s mercy and
love. To celebrate the sacrament is to obtain pardon through God’s
mercy for offenses committed but also to be “reconciled with the
church which they have wounded by their sins and which by charity,
by example and by prayer labors for their conversion (RP, 4). The
communal form is a reminder that the sinfulness of one harms others
just as good actions benefit others. The sacrament is not just about the
individual; it is about the person through Baptism as a member of the
Christian community. To truly achieve its purpose, this sacrament of
healing must take root in the life of the individual so that by God’s
grace that person “may work with all people of good will for justice
and peace in the world” (RP, 10).
First Confession 203
From Reconciliation to Renewal
Teachers today prepare children to receive the sacrament through

instruction and through prayer services such as those found in Appen-
dix Two of the Rite of Penance. These examples, directed to different
age levels, serve as preparation for the celebration of the sacrament.
The prayer service assists children in the formation of conscience
through reflection on scripture in terms of their relationships with
God and with others. Reconciliation underlines God’s initiative as
found in the beautiful parables of the forgiving Father or of the Shep-
herd who looks for the lost sheep as well as in stories such as the call
of Zacchaeus. The focus on reconciliation does not replace the aspects
of penance or confession but indicates that they are part of a process
that culminates in our reconciliation with God and with one another.
The sacrament is not simply a matter of admitting one’s sins; it in-
cludes a regret that leads to a change in attitude and behavior. It
means taking on the likeness of Christ. Through these prayer services,
children acquire a sense of belonging to the community and an aware-
ness that their choices affect others.
The penitential celebrations build up a vocabulary of both sign
and word that enable the child to enter more fully into the Church’s
rite of sacramental forgiveness. In the sample celebrations given in the
Rite, it is recommended that a specific action of service—visiting the
sick, caring in some way for the poor—be suggested as a tangible sign
of conversion and love. A concrete work of charity helps children to
understand that forgiveness and reconciliation “must take root in their
whole life and move them to more fervent service of God and neigh-
bor” (RP, 7b). The reconciled are to become reconcilers. In a world
so in need of forgiveness and reconciliation, perhaps it will be children
who will lead the adult faith community to a renewed appreciation of
the sacrament of healing.
Notes
1. Josef Goldbrunner, Teaching the Sacraments (New York: Herder and

Herder, 1961).
2. John Paul II, Penance and Reconciliation in the Mission of the Church
(Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1984).
40
Asceticism
Then and Now
WILKIE AU
Every year when Lent rolls around, Catholics (especially those of

us who grew up in the pre–Vatican II Church) almost instinctively ask
themselves: “What am I going to give up?” This question reflects the
Lenten emphasis of earlier times, when Lent was seen as a time of ab-
negation, renunciation, penance, and acts of mortification. As
Catholics, we were urged to intensify our spiritual efforts during Lent
and to focus with gratitude on the passion and death of Jesus who died
for our sins. Lenten practices were meant to teach us how to follow
the example of Jesus, who endured suffering and pain out of his love
for God and his commitment to lay down his life for us, his friends. In
imitation of Jesus, we were exhorted to show our love for God by
making some kind of personal sacrifice, like fasting, abstaining from
meat, giving up candy, not going to movies, or saying more prayers
and attending daily Mass. These ascetical practices, like acts of
penance, would help us make reparation for our sins, deepen our life
of faith and virtue, strengthen us against temptation, and unite us in
solidarity with the poor souls in purgatory, whose painful time of pu-
rification could be shortened by our meritorious deeds on their behalf.
These pre–Vatican II Lenten practices present a snapshot of the
ascetical approach to spirituality that dominated the times. This essay
will discuss the nature of Christian asceticism as a means of spiritual
204
Asceticism 205
growth and suggest how some of its past shortcomings can be

avoided in an attempt to reclaim what is of perennial value in our as-
cetical tradition.
A Renewed Asceticism for Today

Christian asceticism embodies the guidelines and practices of
Christians throughout the centuries who have attempted to conform
their lives to the teachings of Jesus. Positively, ascetical teaching and
practices support us in our vulnerability and weakened condition due
to “original sin,” and reinforce the values of self-knowledge, disci-
pline, restraint, vigilance, and persistent effort. Today a renewed ascet-
icism as a response of love flows from a commitment to grow in
human authenticity and to build community through the promotion
of justice and peace. Asceticism can be an important means of liberat-
ing us from inordinate attachments and debilitating addictions that
hinder growth. It can provide invaluable guidance for us in our efforts
to live as followers of Christ in a consumerist and materialistic society.
It cautions us to guard against a self-centeredness that focuses on in-
dividual pleasure at the cost of caring for our neighbor. It alerts us to
our tendency to place our trust in the false gods of material possessions
and power, instead of trusting in the living God. In our post 9/11
world, fractured by divisive forces and threatened by an ecological cri-
sis of global proportions, Christian asceticism encourages us to love
God and neighbor by moderating our desires and preventing greed
from damaging others and harming the earth.
Asceticism in the past, negatively influenced by the stoicism of
Greek philosophy, has at times been tainted by a “no pain, no gain”
mentality that exalts suffering as the path to holiness. At its worst, the
ascetical tradition placed an unhealthy emphasis on self-mastery and
self-control, based on a Platonic devaluation of earthly values and
pleasures, a suspicion of human feelings, and a denigration of the body
and sexuality. Monastic practices of traditional asceticism, once a use-
ful means of purifying the self from egocentric obstacles to loving like
Christ, have at times been so distorted that degrading humiliation
masqueraded as humility, natural and life-enhancing impulses were re-
jected as sinful desire, and submissive acceptance of abuse or deaden-
ing self-sacrifice were confused with Christian love. Fortunately, with
the enlightenment brought about by Vatican II reforms and modern
psychological as well as theological insights, such distorted ascetical
206 WILKIE AU
views have largely been demystified and exposed as dangers to healthy

Christian and human growth.
Asceticism: A Focus on Vigilance and Fidelity

The word “asceticism” comes from the Greek root askesis, the
training that athletes go through to prepare for competition. It is ap-
plied by Paul to the Christian life, viewed as a race for an imperishable
reward (1 Cor 9:24-27). Reflecting this Pauline metaphor for the
Christian life, the ascetical way emphasizes self-control, discipline, as-
sertion, and renunciation focused on achieving the goal. Another
metaphor that grounds an ascetical approach to the Christian life is
that of a lifelong spiritual battle in which we struggle between forces
of good and evil, light and darkness, grace and sin.
Paul graphically describes the nature of this spiritual struggle in his
letter to the Romans in words that have an enduring ring because they
resonate deeply with the personal experience of people throughout the
ages. Like Paul, we too live with a divided self. We encounter warring
forces within ourselves so strong and autonomous that we often feel
helpless and weak. Like Paul, we are perplexed by the mystery of our
interior fragmentation. When the apostle declares, “I cannot under-
stand my own behavior,” we know what he means. “I fail to carry out
the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I
hate . . . for though the will to do what is good is in me, the perform-
ance is not, with the result that instead of doing the good things I
want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want . . . What a
wretch I am!” (Rom 7:14–15, 18). The self-sabotaging self wages war
within every man and woman. Christian asceticism is meant to support
our attempts to fulfill the commandment of love in the midst of weak-
ness and struggles.
Perhaps the most concise gospel illustration of ascetical practice is
found in the “way section” of the Gospel of Mark (8:22–10:52). In
this part of his gospel, Mark uses the words “ho hodos” (meaning “the
way”) a total of seven times as he illustrates what is entailed in follow-
ing Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus requires that we “take up our cross
daily” in imitation of Jesus whose love was sacrificial because he re-
mained faithful to proclaiming the good news of God’s unconditional
and merciful love, even at the cost of personal suffering and death. By
his example of unswerving fidelity to God’s will, Jesus showed how we
are called to surrender our lives over to God, trusting in the divine
Asceticism 207
promise to always bring new life from death. Jesus had to repeat his
instructions three times, because his disciples were slow to understand
and resisted such a radical trust in God.
Christian spirituality acknowledges that our struggles today are
identical to those of Jesus’ disciples. The process of loving according
to the way of Jesus involves a slow and lifelong process of recognizing
that our tendency towards selfishness, control, ambition, competition,
and our desire to be the first and the greatest can stand in the way of
loving like Jesus. Thus, there is a need for ongoing fidelity and vigi-
lance in order to stay as faithful disciples to the message of Jesus and
to avoid the temptations of “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”
Spiritual Disciplines: A New Name for Traditional Practices

In contemporary Christian spirituality, traditional ascetical prac-
tices—such as various forms of meditation and contemplation, spiri-
tual reading, individual and group retreats, and so on—have been re-
trieved and renamed “spiritual disciplines.” These ancient spiritual
practices have regained their valuable place in Christian life today be-
cause of a renewed understanding of them as positive means for fos-
tering spiritual growth.
When ascetical practices were followed as a matter of routine, like
Lenten practices unthinkingly carried over from childhood, they lost
much of their relevance and usefulness in the eyes of many Christians.
Greater appreciation for the contribution such practices make to Chris-
tian growth comes from keeping in mind the following principles:
• Ascetical practices or spiritual disciplines should always be

linked to heartfelt spiritual desires. They are means to an end,
not ends in themselves. We should always first ask what we
want to achieve in our spiritual growth, and only then dis-
cern what practice would be the best means of achieving it.
Ascetical practices risk becoming meaningless and inane
when they are disconnected from the desired goal they
were intended to serve. If, for example, we want to
heighten our sensitivity to the presence of God in daily life,
we need to decide upon what would best help us do this.
Would prayerfully reviewing the day for fifteen minutes
every evening before going to sleep in order to monitor
how God was present throughout the day be the best way
208 WILKIE AU
for us to do this? Or would briefly abstaining from some ac-

tivity—like listening to our iPod, checking our e-mail, or
watching television—for the sake of some silent reflection
in the midst of a busy day work better? Or would doing a
bit of spiritual reading every day best serve our purpose? Or
would skipping lunch occasionally best help us stay in touch
with our hunger for God and alert us to how God actually
meets and nourishes us through ordinary encounters?
• Spiritual disciplines need to be freely chosen, not done out of

obligation; they should feel liberating, not burdensome.
• Spiritual disciplines need to fit our unique personality and re-

ligious sensibility as well as the concrete circumstances of our
personal and work life. Because “one size does not fit all,”
we need to experiment with various spiritual disciplines and
adopt only those that we discover to be fruitful and lifegiv-
ing in light of ongoing personal experience.
Ascetical practices or spiritual disciplines are meant to serve us as

the sycamore branch served Zacchaeus, the tax-collector who was too
short to see Jesus above the crowd and needed help to get a glimpse
of Jesus passing by (Lk 19:1–10). They are meant to be means that
help us recognize and respond to God in the parade of events that
make up our daily lives. If these methods take on exaggerated impor-
tance, they can turn out to be hindrances rather than helps. Ascetical
means can help dispose us to receive God’s self-disclosure and love;
they can be a means of opening ourselves to God’s grace in our lives.
But they can never replace grace, which alone can bring about spiri-
tual transformation.
An ancient Chinese proverb is very instructive here: “Only the
fool stares at his finger when it is pointing to the moon.” Ascetical
practices are like fingers pointing to God. To become preoccupied
with them is to be foolishly distracted from our heart’s true desire.
41
The Rosary
“A Treasure to Be Recovered”
THOMAS H. GROOME
Childhood Memories
Like many Catholics of my vintage, I grew up in a family that re-

cited the nightly Rosary. And we knew why we did: as Mom would
often assure us, the most effective person to bring our prayers to Jesus
was his own mother. As a good son, how could he refuse her? (And
we got the double message.)
As children, we often came to it in protest—“In a minute, Ma”—
but once we had settled on our knees, I remember it as a lovely quiet-
ing time, one that bonded our large family (nine kids) at the end of a
day that had generally been filled with the usual sibling squabbles.
Years later, when we gathered—from the four winds—for my parents’
wakes, and then for those of siblings, it bonded us again. The Rosary
crusader Father Paddy Peyton was right: “The family that prays to-
gether, stays together”—in spirit if not location.
In my native Irish home, the leaping flames of the turf fire com-
bined with the gentle drone of the Hail Marys to introduce me to
what I later knew as meditation, even contemplation. My mother
would often encourage us to “just think about the mysteries.” And
how wise she was. In his apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae
209
(hereafter RVM) of Oct 16, 2002 Pope John Paul II proclaims the
Rosary as a “treasure to be rediscovered” and particularly as a “path of
contemplation.”
If one of us missed the family recitation, our mother’s goodnight
was always accompanied by “be sure to say your Rosary.” We knew
that she kept her own beads under her pillow, at hand for waking mo-
ments. And my grandmother loved to assure us that “if you start the
Rosary and then fall asleep, the angels will finish it for you.”
From my childhood, then, I experienced the gift of the Rosary as
both communal and personal prayer, as a quieting mantra-like mode
of recitation and contemplation. The Rosary also taught me the re-
sponsibility of being a person of prayer myself and that I can pray just
about anytime and anywhere. Even then I knew that I wasn’t literally
praying to Mary, since only God can answer prayer. But I was confi-
dent that Mary was praying with me to Jesus, and was surely effective
in this role. I really did think of her as a “second mother” and the
Rosary as the mode of our conversation.
History and Legacy

The word “Rosary” comes from the Latin rosarium meaning
“rose garden.” We cannot pinpoint how or when the Rosary began
as a popular Catholic devotion. The old tradition that it was person-
ally delivered to St. Dominic by the Blessed Mother is now seriously
questioned. On the other hand, the Dominicans certainly helped to
standardize and popularize it during the sixteenth century. Pope
Pius V—a Dominican—instituted the feast of Our Lady of the
Rosary (now celebrated October 7); he credited the defeat of the
Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 to the efficacy of the Rosary.
Around the year 1000, ordinary people began to recite 150 Our
Fathers, divided into three sets of fifty and counted on strings of beads
called “paternosters.” This became known as “the poor persons’
Psalter” because they were copying the monks and nuns who recited
the 150 psalms each day in their monasteries. As Marian devotion in-
creased in the twelfth century, the Carthusians and Cistercians helped
develop and popularize a Rosary of Hail Marys, keeping an Our Fa-
ther at the beginning of each decade.
The Hail Mary came together from the angel’s salutation to
Mary at the Annunciation (Lk 1:28), and Elizabeth’s greeting to
The Rosary 211
Mary at the Visitation (Lk 1:42). Though this first half of the Hail
Mary had been a popular prayer in the West since the eleventh cen-
tury—and as early as the sixth century in the East—the second half
was not added until the sixteenth century. At about that time the
Dominicans organized Rosary confraternities, encouraging people
to commit to praying it daily.
Though exactly how the Rosary emerged remains unclear, to re-
member why it emerged can help us recognize its spiritual legacy for
today. It arose from the instinct of ordinary Christians that they, too,
were called to lives of prayer and to sanctify their time throughout the
day. They knew the monks and nuns were doing so with their recita-
tion of the 150 psalms as the Divine Office of the Church. But the
peasant people didn’t have time to pause for choral reading, and if
they had, they didn’t have books and most couldn’t ready anyway.
Yet, their good instinct was that Baptism calls all Christians to holi-
ness of life, demanding the regular practice of prayer. And what a gift
it was to have a mantra like meditative prayer that they could recite
alone or together, at work or at rest, anywhere and any time, confi-
dent that Mary, the “holy mother of God” and theirs, was praying
with them.
We can still be inspired by their wise instincts, for the regular prac-
tice of prayer will always be essential to sustain the Christian life. We
need to be conscious of God’s presence in the ordinary time and ac-
tivities of our lives—not just in church. We Christians cannot delegate
others—like monks and nuns in monasteries—to pray instead of us; we
need to pray ourselves, both “with” and “as” Church.
Even if the Rosary is not a person’s regular prayer of choice, one
would do well to find another way to fulfill those good baptismal in-
stincts of our fore-parents in faith. But I’d propose that the hassle of
daily life can still be calmed by a gentle and meditative prayer as “user
friendly” as the Rosary. And, as my mother counseled, to have Mary
pray with you to Jesus her son must surely be effective.
Mysteries Old and New

The Rosary’s widespread popularity fell off after Vatican II—an
unintended outcome of the council’s good efforts to refocus Catholics
on Jesus, on sacred scripture, and on the liturgy. But as John Paul II
noted in RVM, the Rosary “though clearly Marian in character, at
heart is a Christocentric prayer” and “has all the depth of the Gospel
message in its entirety” (#1). Likewise, “it serves as an excellent intro-
duction and a faithful echo of the Liturgy” (#4).
While heralding the Rosary’ spiritual legacy, Pope John Paul II
also recognized a deficiency in its listing of “mysteries.” For some five
hundred years, the full Rosary consisted of fifteen decades of one Our
Father and ten Hail Marys, each decade focused on some event from
the life of Jesus or Mary. The fifteen decades were grouped into three
sets of five called “chaplets” (crowns), named as the Joyful, Sorrowful,
and Glorious mysteries; these focus on the incarnation, passion, and
glorification of Jesus respectively.
Traditionally, the fifth Joyful mystery concludes with “Finding
Jesus in the Temple” at age twelve, and the follow-on Sorrowful mys-
teries begin with “The Agony of Jesus in the Garden.” In other words,
there was no mystery among the fifteen that contemplated the public
life and ministry of Jesus. Considering that many ordinary Catholics
encounter their “working” Christology through reciting the Rosary,
to skip over the public life of Jesus leaves a huge lacuna. Recognizing
this deficiency, Pope John Paul II introduced five new “Mysteries of
Light” that focus on five great events in the public life of Jesus.
Catholic consciousness may now more adequately reflect the Jesus of
history as well as the Christ of faith.
Praying the Rosary Today

Thus, the Rosary now consists of four chaplets of five decades
each, focusing on the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious mys-
teries. The decade of the Rosary devoted to each specific mystery be-
gins with an opening Our Father, is followed by ten Hail Marys, and
ends with the doxology or “Glory be . . .” Though all twenty myster-
ies can be prayed at one time and in sequence, the usual format is some
opening prayers, then five particular decades, and some brief closing
prayers.
It is customary, too, to assign each chaplet to a particular day of
the week. When he added the Luminous mysteries, Pope John Paul II
suggested that the Joyful mysteries be prayed on Monday and Satur-
day, the Luminous mysteries on Thursday, the Sorrowful mysteries on
Tuesday and Friday, and the Glorious mysteries on Wednesday and
Sunday.
The Rosary 213
There are varied

The Mysteries as Suggested in customs with regard
Rosarium Virginis Mariae to the opening and
closing prayers. One
THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES popular version is to
1. The Annunciation by Gabriel to the begin with the first
Virgin Mary verse of Psalm 70, “O
2. The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth God, come to my as-
3. The Birth of the Savior of the World sistance, O Lord make
4. The Presentation of Jesus in the haste to help me,” fol-
Temple lowed by an Our Fa-
5. The Finding of Twelve-year-old Jesus ther, three Hail Marys,
in the Temple and a “Glory be . . .”
Then take note of the
THE LUMINOUS MYSTERIES chaplet for meditation
1. The Baptism of Jesus and the first mystery;
2. Jesus at the Wedding in Cana for example, “The five
3. Jesus Proclaims the Kingdom of God Joyful mysteries, the
4. Jesus’ Transfiguration first mystery, the An-
5. Jesus Institutes the Eucharist nunciation.”
And there are a va-
THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES riety of ways to con-
1. The Anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane clude. Indeed, in my
2. Jesus is Scourged family the “trimmings
3. Jesus is Crowned with Thorns
to the Rosary” could
take almost as long
4. Jesus Carries his Cross
5. Jesus Dies on the Cross
again, depending on
my Mom’s “inten-
THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES tions.” Typical, how-
1. The Resurrection of Jesus from the
ever, is to end with the
Dead Hail Holy Queen or
2. Jesus Ascends into Glory
Memorare, followed by
a closing prayer.
3. The Spirit Outpours upon Mary and
the Disciples at Pentecost
And one’s prayer
mode throughout the
4. Mary is Assumed into Heaven
recitation of the Rosary?
5. Mary Shines forth as Queen of the
The tradition is to
Angels and Saints
meditate or contem-
plate on the mystery of
each decade—rather than focusing on the words of the prayers. So,

with the first Joyful mystery, “The Annunciation,” one can think
about God’s extraordinary initiative toward humankind, about Mary’s
openness to doing God’s will, her role in the work of our salvation,
and so on. Or, more contemplatively, one can imagine and enter into
the setting as the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and listen to the ex-
change between them, with a sense of presence to the scene. The pur-
pose of all such meditation or contemplation is to encourage disciple-
ship to Jesus in daily life. Indeed, in the Rosary we have “a treasure to
be rediscovered.”
42
Catholics Growing Up
The Legion of Decency
RICHARD A. BLAKE, S.J.
When he was defending The Last Temptation of Christ against its

critics, Martin Scorsese maintained: “My whole life has been movies
and religion. That’s it. Nothing else.” The former aspiring Catholic
seminarian was indulging in a bit of exaggeration, no doubt. He did,
however, point out the powerful influence of those twin institutions in
the life of young American Catholics growing up in the Church of the
1950s. Odd as it may seem, religion and the movies have enjoyed a
mutually constructive relationship, or so it seems as I look back.
Within a twenty minute walk from my home in Brooklyn, I could
go to the movies at the Alpine, the Bay Ridge, the Electra, the Stanley,
the Dyker, the Shore Road or the Harbor. Since tickets were fifty cents
or less for children, the usual Saturday “kiddie” shows—two ancient
Westerns or horror films, a serial, newsreel, coming attractions, and ten
cartoons—were all part of the cinematic diet. The movies were the nor-
mal way to pass a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon or a school hol-
iday during the winter or to enjoy an air-conditioned respite from the
oppressive heat in summer. And for teenagers, especially after television
took over the family living room, the movies provided the usual, cost-
efficient first steps away from parents and into the dating game.
On the way to the theater of choice, I might have passed by St.
Ephrem’s, Our Lady of Angels, St. Anselm’s, or St. Patrick’s, each
215
216 RICHARD A. BLAKE, S.J.
with a huge parochial school perched next to the church. The parish
complex, with Mass on Sunday, confession and the posting of the
Mass servers’ schedule on Saturday, and in my pre-teen years school
on weekdays, was in every sense the daily hub of my social universe. It
sponsored the scout troops and the CYO teams, produced annual tal-
ent shows around St. Patrick’s Day and dances for teenagers, young
adults, and married couples.
A Moral Code for the Movies

For Catholics of that period, religion and the movies converged
most obviously through the Legion of Decency. In this universe, few
saw the Legion as oppressive or as restrictive of artistic freedom as the
Legion is commonly viewed today. Catholics in my neighborhood never
expressed doubt about taking the annual oath during Sunday Mass: “I
wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwhole-
some moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a
grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion.” Who
could argue with that? It was an age of muscular, confrontational
Catholicism, and everyone had a duty to join the campaign against
“godless atheism,” as the then current pleonasm had it. Every Saturday
The Brooklyn Tablet was delivered to the door, and since I wasn’t much
interested in seeing what pastors were being transferred, I went directly
to the youth pages to see if any movies had been condemned that week.
I was generally disappointed. For all its reputation today, it’s really amaz-
ing to see how few movies actually received the “C” rating.
As much as any other institution in the American Catholic Church,
the Legion provides an indicator of change not only in the Church’s re-
lationship with the secular world but in its own internal self-awareness.
In 1934, only a few years after the movies learned to talk, it became
quite clear that the industry had absolutely no inclination to observe
the Production Code formulated in 1929 with the help of Father
Daniel Lord, S.J., and Martin Quigley, the outspoken Catholic editor
of the Motion Picture Herald. Then, as always, sex and violence sold
tickets. Understandably feeling betrayed by Hollywood’s ignoring its
own Code, Lord and Quigley retaliated. With the support of the Amer-
ican hierarchy they formed their own organization to rate movies on
the basis of moral content. They christened the organization with the
suitably military title, the Legion of Decency. Since Catholics in the
large East Coast and Midwestern cities formed a significant percentage
of its potential audience, Hollywood took notice. With its quasi-official
Catholics Growing Up 217
standing within the Church, in the mind of many the Legion could in
effect forbid Catholics from going to the movies.
Sensing the proverbial wolf at the box-office door, Hollywood re-
sponded by establishing the Production Code Administration (PCA),
led by Joseph Ignatius Breen, an energetic Catholic layman with an
identifiably Irish Catholic name. The Legion and the PCA operated on
parallel tracks. The Legion offered objections and suggestions as an in-
terested outside party, but the PCA with its own staff of reviewers
working within the industry insisted on changes in scripts or cuts in
films that were ready for release. If a studio refused to comply with
PCA demands, the film did not receive a seal of approval, and the stu-
dios were fined if they chose to release the film without it. Rarely did
anyone defy the PCA.
This was a remarkable development, but not for the reasons usu-
ally cited. The Catholic Church had a long history of banning books
and scrutinizing those accused of heterodoxy. Nothing new on that
score. With the Legion, however, the Church engaged a new popular
art form that reached beyond the realms of academic discourse and
touched the lives of ordinary Catholics. In an astonishingly short time
it recognized the pervasive presence of this new medium, especially
among young people. What’s more, it understood the corporate na-
ture of the industry and used its influence to threaten the profitability
of objectionable films.
A Positive Legacy
Most film historians refer to the Legion as a “pressure group.” It
was that, of course. But it was much more. It enabled the Church to
enter into a dialogue with a major cultural institution. It was one of
the factors, and I would argue an important one, that helped Ameri-
can Catholics break out of their immigrant heritage of insularity.
Through the Legion, Catholics did not withdraw from mainstream
American culture, but addressed it by identifying and effectively ex-
pressing their areas of conflict with secular values in very concrete and
specific terms. Yes, some of the objections were silly then and appear
doubly silly now, but when one thinks of all the wonderful American
films produced during the glory days of the Legion, it’s hard to main-
tain that the Legion and the PCA conspired to stifle artistic expression
to the extent some have claimed. Perhaps they even helped the movies
step beyond their peepshow background and develop a capability for
subtlety.
218 RICHARD A. BLAKE, S.J.
The conversation was not always adversarial. In the early 1950s my

father and I attended the annual communion breakfast of the New
York Motion Picture Holy Name Society. After Mass at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, the group would fill the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-
Astoria, where the dais would contain a mixture of clerics, including
officers of the Legion, industry notables, and an occasional movie star.
Many in attendance were not Catholic, but they came to listen to what
Catholics had to say. And it was clear from the very fact that they were
there that Catholics felt that the movies were important to them as
church members.
The American Catholic Church matured through the experience.
The Legion developed an extensive list of reviewers, which included lay
people and clerics alike, many of whom were educators. After a private
screening, each viewer wrote out reasons to explain the recommended
rating. Without recognizing the fact at the time, the Legion was creat-
ing a cadre of quite sophisticated Catholic film viewers. From this grew
the cinéclubs and discussion groups that sprang up in colleges, which
in turn led to formal academic programs in film studies. If the Catholic
universities did not assume a leading role in grappling with the com-
munications revolution, at least it is clear that they were not left behind.
Some years later, when both American society and the film indus-
try were going through the convulsions of the 1960s, the legacy of the
Legion of Decency paid off. As social norms changed, the dialogue
continued. The PCA lost its clout, and the Legion morphed into the
National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures, whose oath, if adminis-
tered at all, took a more positive tone: “I promise to promote by word
and deed what is morally and artistically good in motion picture en-
tertainment.” Catholic audiences had become quite discriminating
viewers, and reviewers like Moira Walsh at America or Philip Hartung
at Commonweal persuaded their readers that films with adult themes
made for mature audiences were not necessarily immoral. Many of
their reviews seem quite progressive, even by today’s standards. Both
Catholic and industry rating systems became advisory. Today few
Catholics speak of condemning movies.
For the most part, after a long and at times acrimonious dialogue,
Catholics have built a comfortable relationship with the movie indus-
try. But the more important result is internal. Through the experience
of the Legion of Decency, American Catholics have engaged the pop-
ular culture on its own terms. In the process they have grown in their
own self-understanding as both American and Catholic.
43
The Angelus
Praying throughout the Day
BISHOP ROBERT F. MORNEAU
Sanctifying Life
Our parish church and school stood on a small hill in the village
of Bear Creek, Wisconsin. It was during the pre–Vatican II days of the
1940s and 1950s that my five siblings and I attended our Catholic
grade school and the weekend liturgies at St. Mary’s Parish. Mass was
in Latin; our teachers, all women religious, wore habits; the priest and
his housekeeper governed the parish. It was the days of no parish
council, no lay lectors or Communion distributors, no finance coun-
cil. It was a time of deep devotion (family Rosary every night) and
strict observance of the Church’s rules (attending Mass every Sunday
and holy day and no meat on Fridays).
I remember those days with gratitude while appreciating that our
participation in the life of faith was quite limited, given that the liturgy
was in Latin and the participation of the laity in the life of the Church
was minimal. Yet people prayed, reached out to the poor, were gener-
ous with their time and talent and treasure, feared the Lord, and hon-
ored their faith as being extremely important, if not the most impor-
tant aspect of their lives. The pluralism and relativism of our current
times had not eroded belief in God nor made irrelevant one’s practice
of the Catholic faith. It was a good time; it was a time of grace.
219
220 BISHOP ROBERT F. MORNEAU
One pre–Vatican II devotion that was passed on to me was “The

Angelus.” This prayer was based on the annunciation story (Lk
1:26–38). The angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary with the re-
quest that she become the mother of Jesus. Though fearful and not
knowing how this could happen, Mary gave her consent. The mystery
of the incarnation was honored and recalled by a triple repetition of
the “Hail Mary,” preceded by an introductory verse and followed by
a concluding prayer. This devotion was repeated three times a day as
the church bells rang, in early morning, at noon, and in the evening.
It helped ordinary people sanctify their everyday lives with regular
pauses for prayer. Here is that devotion:
Verse: The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,

Response: and she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
All: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art
thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and
at the hour of our death. Amen.
Verse: Behold the handmaid of the Lord,

Response: be it done unto me according to thy word.
All: Hail Mary, . . .
Verse: And the Word was made Flesh,

Response: and dwelt among us.
All: Hail Mary, . . .
Verse: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,

Response: that we may be made worthy of the promises of
Christ.
All: Let us pray. Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy

grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of
Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an
Angel, may by His passion and cross, be brought to the glory
of His resurrection. We ask this through the same Christ our
Lord. Amen.
The Angelus 221
The origin of this devotion is obscure, but it probably arose out of

the monastic tradition. Whatever its origin, for more than five cen-
turies this prayer nourished the faith life of Christians as they paused
to honor the mystery of the incarnation three times a day (for some,
just once a day). In Vatican City, the Angelus bells still chime three
times daily as they do in some parishes throughout the world.
An Evangelizing Prayer
In 1975, Pope Paul VI wrote an apostolic exhortation Evangelii
Nuntiandi (Evangelization in the Modern World). It is one of the
Church’s most accessible and theologically rich documents. In that
post-synodal exhortation, the pope stated that one of the eight meth-
ods of doing evangelization is popular piety. At the Second Vatican
Council tremendous emphasis was put on the sacraments and scrip-
ture, and rightly so. For many years, devotions such as the Rosary, the
Stations of the Cross, novenas, and the Angelus had been the main
means for many Catholics to stay “connected” to God. Since the
pre–Vatican II celebration of the Mass was in Latin, as was the celebra-
tion of the other sacraments, and since the scriptures also were pro-
claimed in Latin and there was little if any encouragement to do Bible
study, popular devotions filled the vacuum.
With the implementation of the sixteen Vatican II documents,
there has been a major focus on God’s word and on full, conscious,
active participation in the sacramental life. While this is well inten-
tioned and correct, there is a problem. How can people stay “con-
nected” to God and their faith life on a daily basis in-between the cel-
ebrations of the sacraments? There is room—indeed, need—for
devotions and practices lest we forget the presence of the Lord in our
daily life; lest we fail to nurture a strong personal relationship with
God that is expressed in action. So, we may well ask the question:
Does the devotion of the Angelus merit a retrieval?
For centuries the Angelus served us well. It contains the whole dy-
namic of the spiritual life. The opening verse and response are all
about God’s initiative; God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary. In the spir-
itual life, God always takes the initiative and we are, at best, respon-
ders. The Angelus reflects the central chapter in salvation history and
pondering it three times a day enriched our faith journey.
In the second verse and response we witness Mary’s obedience of
faith. Mary’s response to the angel and Mary’s statement at Cana
222 BISHOP ROBERT F. MORNEAU
(“Do whatever he tells you” Jn 2:5b) provide a model for all Chris-
tians. Here we have a positive response to the divine invitation. God’s
will is paramount, and Mary embraces it with her whole being. We
have here an attitude of faith that can transform our lives and the
world.
The third part of the Angelus plunges us into the mystery of the
incarnation. All history changed when God became incarnate in the
person of Jesus. The Word became flesh and took on our human na-
ture, even unto death. We must not hurry over this profound mystery.
There is a “scandal of particularity” here: that God would come at this
time, to this people, in this land, in this manner boggles the imagina-
tion and challenges our faith. Our finite intelligence and our limited
love stumble before the extravagant love of God.
The devotion ends with a prayer that reminds us of the paschal
mystery. We ask God for the grace to participate in the life, death, and
resurrection of Christ. Only in this way can we come to God’s glory
and find peace. Though we are graced persons, we are aware of our
sinfulness and know we are not worthy, but with God’s mercy we can
be reconciled to God and know the gift of eternal life.
Interspersed with the devotion is the “Hail Mary.” In this brief
prayer we acknowledge a number of things: that Mary is filled with
God’s love (grace); that she is the most blessed of all women; that she
is the mother of God; that we are sinners ever in need of her prayers.
It is Mary’s intercessory prayer that helps us to do what she did: hear
and live God’s word. The Angelus is truly a treasure that deserves our
attention and our practice.
A Healthy Devotional Catholicism

We must be clear that the sacraments and scripture are founda-
tional to the spiritual life (as are asceticism and service). Devotions,
though helpful and nurturing, do not have the centrality of God’s
word and sacramental life. Yet, when devotions are grounded in scrip-
ture and when devotions dispose us to celebrate the sacraments more
fully, they should be given due consideration. I maintain that the re-
trieval of the Angelus has the power to transform our individual lives,
our communities, and our world. The Angelus makes us recognize
that God is always active and inviting us into the life of grace; the An-
gelus calls us to a life of obedience to God’s will; the Angelus has us
re-experience the central mystery of the incarnation; the Angelus in-
The Angelus 223
vites us into the paschal mystery and divine glory; the Angelus reminds
us to raise our minds and hearts to God throughout the day. All this
in three minutes, several times a day.
The story is told that Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) heard the
chimes of Fordham University ringing out three times a day. Not
knowing why the bells were rung, he inquired and was informed that
these bells were inviting people to stop and pray the Angelus. Im-
pressed with this practice, Poe wrote the following poem—indeed, the
following prayer:
Hymn
At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—

Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe—in good and ill—
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
(1835)
It is good to give the poets the last word. No more need be said.
44
The Eucharistic Fast

A Long Past into the Present
BERARD L. MARTHALER, O.F.M. CONV.
It is now seventy-five years since, in the language of the time, I

“made my First Communion.” My memory of the event, except for
two things, is lost in the mist of time. One is the frequent reference to
Napoleon Bonaparte who was reputed to have said that the day of his
First Communion was the “happiest day of his life.” The other was the
preoccupation with the eucharistic fast lest swallowing a few drops of
water or taking a piece of candy after midnight would disqualify me
from participating in the solemnity with the rest of my first-grade
classmates.
It was not only first-communicants, however, who were preoccu-
pied with the eucharistic fast. Until Pope Pius XII in effect abrogated
it in the 1950s, ramifications of the eucharistic fast generated endless
casuistry and fostered scrupulosity among clergy and laity alike. It ad-
mitted of no exceptions and made no allowance for parvitas
materiae—a few drops of water broke the fast as effectively as a whole
glass! It shaped Mass schedules, the pastoral care of the sick, and the
health and disposition of priests. A bride and groom who opted to sol-
emnize their wedding and receive Holy Communion at a nuptial Mass
could not drink or eat until after the ceremony.
224
The Eucharistic Fast 225
A Long and Strict History
The custom of fasting from food and drink before receiving the
Eucharist had a long history. It was so common by the end of the
fourth century that St. Augustine suggested that it must have origi-
nated as a result of divine inspiration. The 1917 Code of Canon Law
formalized the regulations of local councils in stating that anyone who
does not fast from midnight is not to receive the Eucharist except
when in danger of death or the need to prevent irreverence toward the
sacrament requires it (c. 858).
In practice this meant that priests who celebrated Sunday Mass
often did not eat for sixteen to twenty hours after the meal on Satur-
day evening. (I remember a housekeeper/cook in one parish who, de-
spite my protests, served the same menu, a breakfast of eggs and
bacon, toast and coffee, whether I celebrated the early Mass or was
eating for the first time in mid-afternoon after the late Mass and bap-
tisms.) Priests only a few years older than I told of celebrating an early
Mass in one place and then traveling to a mission church—sometimes
two—to celebrate another Mass many hours later. Not having imbibed
or ingested anything since the previous evening, their stomachs
growled, their heads ached, and sunny dispositions suffered.
Pastoral manuals interpreted the law for every imaginable circum-
stance and went into minute detail as how to calculate midnight.
(Does the first or last striking of the clock at twelve signal midnight?)
Most manuals agreed that the law applied only to digestible matter, so
that putting toothpicks, buttons, coins and similar objects in the
mouth (and biting ones’ fingernails!) did not break the fast. Smoking
did not break the fast; neither did snuff (in the nose) nor chewing to-
bacco. On the other hand, chewing before Communion appeared un-
seemly (“indecens”), and one who indulged in it was probably guilty
of venial sin. Soups, juices, coffee, tea and all liquids, whether nour-
ishing or not, were also prohibited.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent instructed the faithful that
abstaining from food and drink from the preceding midnight is a way
of preparing the body for Holy Communion. It adds, “The dignity of
the sacrament also requires a certain abstinence on the part of married
persons: they should abstain from marital relations for some days pre-
vious to their receiving Communion.” Pope Pius X made no mention
of such a restriction in describing the dispositions for frequent and
226 BERARD L. MARTHALER, O.F.M. CONV.
daily reception of the Eucharist in the decree Sacra Tridentina Synodus

(1905). In fact, the decree denounces the kind of rigorism that ex-
cluded whole classes of persons as, for example, “merchants or those
who are married.” Nonetheless, when I joined the faculty at the
Catholic University of American in 1963 there was a professor (not in
Religious Studies!) who taught students to keep the tradition of the
Tridentine catechism alive—for both kinds of fast. And I have reason
to believe there were others in classrooms and pulpits elsewhere of a
similar bent.
Changes Emerge Slowly

Pius X also relaxed the eucharistic fast for the sick. The concession
was later incorporated into the 1917 Code of Canon Law: “The sick
who have been confined to bed for a month without certain hope of
a speedy recovery may, with the prudent advice of their confessor, re-
ceive Holy Communion once or twice a week though they have taken
medicine, or some liquid food beforehand” (c. 858, #2). The word-
ing in the code raised a new series of questions: Did the concession
apply only to those suffering from a serious illness? Under what cir-
cumstances could it apply to pregnancy? Did the reference to the
“bed-ridden” (infirmi qui discumbunt) include persons who are ailing
but who are confined to bed only a few hours each day? When in in-
dividual cases there was doubt, the sick person was instructed to ask
for a dispensation from the fast.
More and more after the time of Pius X and the promulgation of
the 1917 Code, dispensations from the eucharistic fast became com-
mon and were granted for reasons other than sickness. Priests, for ex-
ample, who because of particular circumstances had to binate (cele-
brate Mass twice in one day), petitioned for a dispensation and
generally received it. During the Second World War the law was re-
laxed for entire classes of people: notably, chaplains, those serving in
the armed forces. and defense workers under certain circumstances.
After World War II Pope Pius XII recognized that “the peculiar
conditions of the times in which we live have introduced many
changes into the usages of society” that made it difficult for people to
partake in the divine mysteries. He published two documents, the
apostolic constitution Christus Dominus (1953) and a motu proprio,
Sacram Communionem (1957), that mitigated the eucharistic fast in
such a way that the faithful were able to observe it more readily. While
The Eucharistic Fast 227
reaffirming “the law of the eucharistic fast,” Christus Dominus—in a

radical reversal of past practice—lays down the general principle that
“natural water does not break the eucharistic fast,” and lists many ex-
amples of “special circumstances” in which the law does not apply. The
constitution together with the motu proprio that followed a few years
later in effect abrograted all previous concessions, faculties, and dis-
pensations and rewrote the law governing the eucharistic fast.
The new law described in Sacram Communionem took effect in
March 1957. Again citing “the notable changes which have occurred
in private and public working conditions as well as in all branches of
social life,” it allows the celebration of Mass every day after midday
“whenever the spiritual good of a considerable number of faithful de-
mands it.” No mention is made of midnight. The eucharistic fast both
for priests who wish to celebrate Mass and the faithful who wish to re-
ceive Holy Communion, “is limited to three hours for solid food and
alcoholic beverages, and to one hour for non-alcoholic beverages.” At
the close of the third session of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI reduced the
abstinence from food and drink to one hour, the norm that was later
incorporated into the 1983 Code of Canon Law (c. 91).
The eucharistic fast, intended as a way of honoring and showing
reverence to the sacrament, in the course of time had, in the words of
Pope Pius XII, made it difficult for people to partake in the divine mys-
teries. His reform and the further refinement of Pope Paul VI helped
make Pius X’s ideal of frequent Communion a reality. Pius X had
quoted the Council of Trent: “The Holy Council wishes indeed that at
each Mass the faithful who are present should communicate, not only
in spiritual desire, but sacramentally, by the actual reception of the Eu-
charist.” Furthermore, the action of Pius XII and Paul VI undercut
some of the worst examples of casuistry and helped individuals prepar-
ing for their first reception of the sacrament to focus on the Eucharist
and not on whether they swallowed water while brushing their teeth.
The value of this old tradition of fasting before receiving is that it
serves as a reminder of the reverence that Christians should have for
the Eucharist.
45
Lent
No Feasting without Fasting
RONALD ROLHEISER, O.M.I.
What has Lent meant to me?

I had the kind of religious upbringing that you might order from
the catalogue, if you were looking for a classical Roman Catholic back-
ground. I grew up in an immigrant Catholic family, inside a strongly
ethnic, mainly Catholic, rural community. The parish was the center of
everything. Everyone went to church and the Church’s seasons, par-
ticularly Lent, were felt inside of daily life. There were no weddings or
dances during Lent and the old rules of fasting and abstinence were
pretty rigorously followed. I liked the season even as I disliked it.
On the one hand, Lent made me feel good, giving me a sense of
discipline and sacrifice, like military boot-camp. On the other hand, I
counted the days until it was over, preferring feasting to fasting. But,
like all Roman Catholics of my generation, I never questioned its wis-
dom: There can be no feasting unless there first is fasting. My parents
imprinted that into my very genes.
Deeper Appreciation of Meaning

Unlike a lot of my peers, I never went through any adolescent re-
bellion where, for a time, I felt that the demands of Lent were silly and
that a more mature attitude would be one of defiance. Rather, I went
228
Lent 229
straight from my childhood faith to the seminary and everything my

family had instilled in me was reinforced by what I learned and lived
in the years leading up to my ordination to the priesthood.
Partly this was good, though it had an underside: I was never par-
ticularly reflective about Lent during all these years. It was simply a
given, like a northern winter whose cold needs to be endured until
spring comes and whose barrenness makes summer seem all the
sweeter. I gave little thought to either its deeper theology or its deeper
spirituality.
Vatican II came along just as I entered the seminary and, within
five years, the council’s effects were very much felt in how we lived out
Lent, even if I still wasn’t particularly reflective in terms of its theol-
ogy and spirituality. It wasn’t my thinking that changed, it was my ac-
tions. The old rules regarding fasting and abstinence, except for Ash
Wednesday and Good Friday, were lifted in Canada (where I lived),
though Roman Catholics were still encouraged to fast and abstain as
before, but it was no longer a requirement. This had a double effect
on me:
Negatively, not having to fast every day lessened the hold that
Lent had on my everyday consciousness and, except for the fact that
Lent was emphasized in the liturgy, it became easy to simply forget
that we were in a season of penance. Most days, life went on exactly as
in ordinary time. Also, the culture was growing more secular and at-
tuning itself to a calendar quite different from the Church’s liturgical
calendar. There were now weddings and dances and high banquets
during Lent and, for me, as for many others, Lent effectively shrank
from forty days to seven. I still bore down on Ash Wednesday and dur-
ing Holy Week.
More positively, though, the lack of external laws regarding phys-
ical asceticism, eventually led me to do more inner work in terms of
what Lent meant to me. Each year now, I find the season more mean-
ingful. What does Lent mean to me? Two things: Ashes and Desert.
A Cinderella Story
We all know the story of Cinderella, this centuries-old wisdom-
tale that speaks about the value of ashes. The name, Cinderella, itself
already says most of it. Literally it means: the young girl who sits in the
cinders. As the tale makes plain, before the glass slipper is placed on
her foot, before the beautiful gown, ball, dance, and marriage, there
230 RONALD ROLHEISER, O.M.I.
must first be a period of being humbled. Cinderella’s story is a story

of Lent.
Lent, for me, is a season to, metaphorically, sit in the ashes, to
spend time, like Cinderella, working and sitting among the cinders of
the fire—grieving over what I’ve done wrong, renouncing the dance,
refraining from the banquet, refusing to do business as usual, waiting
while some silent growth takes place within me, and simply being still
so that the ashes can do their work in me.
And the place to sit in the ashes is the desert. Just as my parents
believed that nobody could truly feast unless he or she first fasted, I
believe that nobody can enter the Promised Land without first spend-
ing time in the desert.
The desert, biblically and mystically, is not so much a geographi-
cal location as a place in the heart, a place where we go to face our
demons, feel our smallness, and be in a special intimacy with God. I
believe that, before you are ready to fully and gratefully receive life,
you have to first be readied by facing your own demons and this means
going “into the desert,” namely, facing that place where you are most
frightened and lonely.
And this is not a place within which I can decide how I want to
grow and change, but a place that I undergo, expose myself to, and
have the courage to face. The idea is not so much that I do things
there, but that things happen to me while I am there—silent, unseen,
transforming things. The desert purifies me, almost against my will,
through God’s efforts. My job is only to have the courage to be there.
The desert makes me feel small and empty. This is an important
spiritual place. Christina Crawford once said: “Lost is a place too!”
That’s wise. Emptiness can be a womb. Barrenness can be fertile.
Desert flowers are often the most beautiful of all.
Medicine for the Soul

The experience of emptiness and barrenness is often best for the
soul. Why? Because when we are surrounded by emptiness—when, as
Shelley said, “the lone and barren sands stretch far away”—the soul is
by necessity re-gestated. The experience of emptiness writes into our
spiritual DNA what was once imprinted into our chromosomes,
namely, that we are small, alone, fragile, and in need of a great provi-
dence and a great love.
Lent 231
For this reason, among others, the idea of the desert has played a
prominent part in the spirituality of all religions. Great religious per-
sons, Jesus among them, have always sought out the desert. The idea
is to go into a barren landscape, hole up in some cave or crag, and sim-
ply sit there—alone, without protection or sustenance, with only sand
around you, scorched by day, freezing at night, soaking in the barren-
ness, waiting for something deep to shift inside of your soul. The hope
is that by immersing oneself in such emptiness one’s soul will empty
itself of all that is false and prideful.
The desert is that place in the soul where I feel most alone, insub-
stantial, and frightened. What happens to me there? What do I expe-
rience in the emptiness of the desert?
Emptiness
I feel the depth of our own loneliness. In the desert, in the womb
of emptiness, voices within me remind me of a painful fact: “I am not
sufficient unto myself; I cannot keep myself alive. I cannot provide sus-
tenance for myself. I depend on many things and many people—for
life, support, love, friendship, meaning. Everything I rely on can eas-
ily disappear. It’s fragile. I’m fragile. I could disappear.”
These feelings of fragility help break down my carefully nurtured
sense of my own specialness. In the desert a brutal truth hits me: “I
do not stand out. Nothing I can do will ultimately make me special,
beyond anyone else. I am only a tiny piece of a great fabric within
which I can only take my place. I am one of billions, one among many,
no more important than anyone else.”
Finally, too, when I am surrounded by emptiness, my mortality
seeps through, raw and painful. A voice long kept at bay begins to say:
“I too am going to die. Almost nothing sits between me and death. I
stand on the brink of nothingness.” The desert is full of painful voices.
They tell me of my smallness.
We have no real maturity until our souls are shaped by that real-
ization. The desert, letting emptiness work in us, is what re-gestates
the soul. Emptiness is a womb. It re-molds the soul and lets us be born
again, adults still, but now aware, as we once were as small children,
that there can be no life and meaning outside of acknowledging our
littleness and reaching out, as do infants, to a great providence and a
great love outside of us.
232 RONALD ROLHEISER, O.M.I.
“Lost is a place too” . . . and Lent is about going there. It is still

not my favorite season. Feasting is still what we are born to do, but, I
know now, just more deeply than I did as child, that there can be no
real feasting until there has first been some fasting. The sublime is con-
tingent upon sublimation. That’s the lesson of Lent.
co-auContributors
Mary Christine Athans, B.V.M., is Professor Emerita at the Saint Paul Sem-
inary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and an
adjunct faculty member at the Catholic Theological Union and Loyola Uni-
versity Chicago. Among her books and articles on Jewish-Christian relations,
American Catholicism, and American Catholic spirituality are The Coughlin-
Fahey Connection: Father Charles E. Coughlin, Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp.,
and Religious Anti-Semitism in the United States 1938–1954 (New York: Peter
Lang, 1991), and A Holy Lineage: The Jewish Roots of Christian Spirituality,
forthcoming from Stimulus Books of Paulist Press.
Wilkie Au is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University,

where he teaches in the area of spirituality and coordinates the graduate con-
centration in spiritual direction. Author of four books on Christian spirituality,
his By Way of the Heart: Toward a Holistic Christian Spirituality won the 1990
Book Award of the College Theology Society. His latest work (with co-author
Jungian analyst Noreen Cannon Au), The Discerning Heart: Exploring the
Christian Path, was awarded first place by the Catholic Press Association of the
U.S. and Canada in the category of pastoral ministry in May 2007.
James J. Bacik, a priest of the Diocese of Toledo, serves as campus minister

and adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Toledo. His books
include Apologetics and the Eclipse of Mystery, Contemporary Theologians, and,
most recently, A Light Unto My Path: Crafting Effective Homilies. He was the
writer for the editorial committee that produced the American bishops’ pas-
toral letter on campus ministry “Empowered by the Spirit.”
John F. Baldovin, S.J., is Professor of Historical and Liturgical Theology at

Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. He is also president of the
international Jungmann Society for Jesuits and Liturgy and past president of
the international ecumenical Societas Liturgica and the North American Acad-
emy of Liturgy (from which he received the Berakah Award in 2007). His most
recent book is Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (2008).
233
234 CONTRIBUTORS
Dianne Bergant, C.S.A., is Professor of Biblical Studies at Catholic Theolog-

ical Union in Chicago. She was president of the Catholic Biblical Association
of America (200–2001). She is now on the editorial boards of Biblical Theol-
ogy Bulletin and Chicago Studies. She wrote the weekly column, “The Word,”
for America magazine (2002–2005). She currently works in the areas of bib-
lical interpretation and biblical theology, particularly on issues of peace, ecol-
ogy, and feminism. Her most recent publications include Scripture (Col-
legeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008) and A Word for Every Season (New
York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008).
Richard A. Blake, S.J., is currently co-director of the film studies program

at Boston College. He previously taught at Georgetown University and
LeMoyne College. After receiving a doctorate in film from Northwestern
University, he joined the editorial staff of America and eventually became the
magazine’s executive editor. He now serves as editor of Studies in the Spiri-
tuality of Jesuits and continues to review films for America. His most recent
books are Afterimage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination and Street Smart:
The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese and Lee.
Mary C. Boys, S.N.J.M., is Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical The-

ology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Among books she
has authored or edited are four on Christian-Jewish relations. She is currently
working on a Jewish-Christian-Muslim commentary on the Passover Hag-
gadah as well as on a book on the death of Jesus.
Francine Cardman is Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Church

History at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. Her recent
publications include “Sisters of Thecla: Knowledge, Power, and Change in the
Church,” in Prophetic Witness: Catholic Women’s Strategies for the Church, ed.
Colleen Griffiths (Crossroad, 2009) and “Poverty and Wealth as Theater: John
Chrysostom’s Homilies on Lazarus and the Rich Man,” in Wealth and Poverty
in Early Church and Society, ed. Susan R. Holman (Baker Academic, 2008).
Mary Collins, O.S.B., a Benedictine Sister of Atchison, Kansas, is Professor

Emerita of The School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic
University of America in Washington, D.C. Her decision to concentrate in
sacramental and liturgical theology when she began her doctoral studies in
1963 was guided by her novitiate reading of the bound volumes of Orate
Frates/Worship from 1926 forward, the period when the journal was being
edited by Michel and Diekmann. She has edited and written for liturgical and
theological journals and encyclopedias, authored several books, and lectured
widely.
CONTRIBUTORS 235
Donald Cozzens, a priest of the diocese of Cleveland, teaches in the religious

studies department of John Carroll University. His books include the The
Changing Face of the Priesthood and Freeing Celibacy, both published by Litur-
gical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota.
Charles E. Curran is the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human

Values at Southern Methodist University and a priest of the Diocese of
Rochester, New York. He has served as president of three national profes-
sional societies—the American Theological Society, the Catholic Theological
Society of America, and the Society of Christian Ethics. His latest books are
Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History (2008) and Loyal Dis-
sent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian (2006), both published by Georgetown
University.
Michael J. Daley is a theology teacher at St. Xavier High School in Cincin-

nati, Ohio. He is a widely published writer whose articles have appeared in
U.S. Catholic, St. Anthony Messenger, Religion Teacher’s Journal, and National
Catholic Reporter, among other publications. His latest book is Our Catholic
Symbols: A Rich Spiritual Heritage (Twenty-Third, 2009).
James D. Davidson taught sociology at Purdue University from 1968 until

he retired in 2009. He specialized in the sociology of religion, with particu-
lar emphasis on studies of American Catholicism. He is author, or co-author,
of nine books, including American Catholics Today (2007) and Catholicism in
Motion (2005). He has been president of the Association for the Sociology of
Religion, the Religious Research Association, and the North Central Socio-
logical Association. In 2007, he received the Rev. Louis Luzbatek Award for
Exemplary Research in the Church from the Center for Applied Research on
the Apostolate.
Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., a monk of St. Meinrad Archabbey (Indiana), is

Professor of Church History at St. Meinrad School of Theology. He also
serves as Professor of Black Catholic History in the Summer Institute at
Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. His publications include
History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, 1990)
and Henriette Delille: Servant of Slaves, Witness to the Poor (New Orleans:
Archdiocese of New Orleans and Sisters of the Holy Family, 2004). He also
edited a work with Jamie Phelps, O.P., entitled Stamped with the Image of
God: African Americans as God’s Image in Black (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2003). In 2002, the Catholic University of America awarded him
the Johannes Quasten Medal for Excellence in Scholarship and Leadership
in Religious Studies.
236 CONTRIBUTORS
Kate Dooley, O.P., is a Sinsinawa (Wisconsin) Dominican Sister who teaches

in the Department of Theology at Dominican University, River Forest, Illi-
nois. She has published widely in catechetical and liturgical journals and writ-
ten a number of catechetical texts and resource materials. She is the author of
To Listen and Tell: Commentary on the Introduction to the Lectionary for Masses
with Children and is currently working on Be What You Celebrate on liturgi-
cal catechesis. In 2005 she received the Emmaus Award for Excellence in Cat-
echesis from the National Catholic Education Association of Parish Catechet-
ical Leaders and the Georgetown Center for Liturgy National Award for
Outstanding Contribution to the Liturgical Life of the Church.
Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., (d. December 12, 2008) was the Laurence J.
McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University, Bronx,
New York (1988–2008). Prior to that, he taught at Woodstock College and
The Catholic University of America. He was the author of numerous books
and hundreds of articles, perhaps the most noted and memorable one being
Models of Church (1974). In 2001 Dulles was the first United States–born
theologian who was not a bishop to be named to the College of Cardinals.
Robert Ellsberg is the publisher of Orbis Books. From 1975 to 1980 he

worked with Dorothy Day as part of the Catholic Worker community in New
York where he served for two years as managing editor of The Catholic Worker.
He has edited Dorothy Day: Selected Writings and The Duty of Delight: The Di-
aries of Dorothy Day. His own books include All Saints: Daily Reflections on
Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.
Thomas H. Groome is Professor of Theology and Religious Education at

Boston College and chair of the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral
Ministry within Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. His most
recent book is What Makes Us Catholic (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002).
Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., is currently Distinguished Professor of Ecumenism and

Historical Theology at Memphis Theological Seminary and academic dean of
the Institute for Catholic Ecumenical Leadership. Prior to that, he served ten
years as director of Faith and Order for the National Council of Churches,
and then fourteen years as associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical
and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bish-
ops. Most recently, he co-edited with Stephen B. Bevans Evangelization and
Religious Freedom (Paulist Press, 2009). A member (and former board mem-
ber) of the Catholic Theological Society of America National Association of
Diocesan Ecumenical Officers (associate), and former board member of the
North American Academy of Ecumenists, he has spoken to a wide range of
religious groups, including the American Academy of Religions, the College
CONTRIBUTORS 237
Theological Society, the Faith and Order Commission USA, and Councils of
Churches in various states and many varied religious and educational groups
throughout the world.
Christine E. Gudorf is a professor in and chair of the Religious Studies De-

partment at Florida International University in Miami. Her latest book,
Boundaries: A Casebook in Environmental Ethics, co-authored with James
Huchingson, was published in Japanese in 2008 and will have a second Eng-
lish edition in 2009. She was president of the Society of Christian Ethics in
2007–2008 and writes on many different areas of ethics. Lately she has been
teaching and lecturing in Indonesia and arranging graduate-student ex-
changes with India, Indonesia, Ghana, and Colombia. She has been married
forty years, raised three sons, and has two grandchildren.
John F. Haught is Senior Fellow, Science and Religion, at Woodstock The-

ological Center, Georgetown University. His area of specialization is system-
atic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmol-
ogy, evolution, and ecology. He is the author of numerous books, including
God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and
Hitchens (2007); Christianity and Science (2007); God After Darwin (2nd
edition, 2007), and Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution (2001).
He lectures internationally on issues relating to science and religion.
Zachary Hayes, O.F.M., is Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at

Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. Over the years he has also taught at the
Franciscan School of Theology (Berkeley, California); at the Franciscan Insti-
tute at St. Bonaventure University (Allegheny, New York); and at the Univer-
sity of Notre Dame. During his years in Chicago, he collaborated with the
Chicago Center for Religion and Science where he treated aspects of the
Franciscan intellectual tradition related to the scientific issues being discussed
at the Center. At present he is working on translations of the writings of the
great medieval theologian, St. Bonaventure. Among his publications are many
articles, reviews, and sixteen books, including A Window to the Divine, The
Gift of Being, and What Are They Saying about the End of the World?
Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M., is a Franciscan friar and priest teaching at

Boston College, where he is presently chair of the Theology Department. A
friend of the late George Higgins, he has written extensively in the fields of
Catholic social teaching and social ethics. Among his publications are Modern
Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations (Georgetown
University Press, 2005) and Responses to 101 Questions on Catholic Social
Teaching (Paulist Press, 2001). He is a past president of the Catholic Theo-
logical Society of America.
238 CONTRIBUTORS
Mary E. Hines obtained her PhD at the University of St. Michael’s College,
Toronto. She is Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College in Boston. She is
the author of Whatever Happened to Mary?, TheTransformation of Dogma: An
Introduction to Karl Rahner on Doctrine and co-editor of The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Rahner. She has written numerous articles on ecclesiology,
feminist theology, and the theology of Mary. She has served on the board of
directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America and on the Anglican-
Roman Consultation in the United States (ARCUSA).
David Hollenbach, S.J., is director of the Center for Human Rights and In-
ternational Justice and holds the Human Rights and International Justice
University Chair at Boston College, where he teaches theological ethics and
Christian social ethics. He recently published Refugee Rights and The Global
Face of Public Faith. He has regularly been visiting professor at Hekima Col-
lege in Nairobi, Kenya. He assisted the National Conference of Catholic Bish-
ops in drafting their 1986 pastoral letter “Economic Justice for All: Catholic
Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.” He received the John Courtney
Murray Award for distinguished achievement in theology from the Catholic
Theological Society of America and the Marianist Award from the University
of Dayton for Catholic contributions to intellectual life.
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, who was born in La Habana, Cuba, has been Professor
of Christian Ethics and Theology since 1991 at the Theological School, Drew
University, New Jersey. After being a missionary in Peru from 1975 to 1983 she
worked as parish minister in Rochester, New York, and on the staff of the
Women’s Ordination Conference. Since the 1980s she has worked in elaborat-
ing mujerista theology based on the religious understandings and practices of
Latinas in the United States. She co-authored, with Yolanda Tarango, Hispanic
Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church (1988), the first Latina theology book pub-
lished in this country. Her latest book is La Lucha Continues—Mujerista Theol-
ogy (Orbis, 2004). At present she is working on a book to be published in 2011
by Fortress Press, Justicia: A Reconciliatory Practice of Care and Tenderness.
Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Distinguished Professor

of New Testament and Christian Origins in the Candler School of Theology
at Emory University. In addition to his many works devoted to the New Tes-
tament, he has addressed topics of contemporary theological and moral con-
cern in books such as The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters,
and Scripture and Discernment: Decision-Making in the Church.
Theresa Kane, R.S.M., is a Sister of Mercy and associate professor at Mercy

College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, teaching in the areas of world religions,
women’s studies, and religion and psychology. In 2005 she received the Out-
CONTRIBUTORS 239
standing Teacher Award from the faculty there. Prior to that, in 1980, she was
given the U.S. Catholic Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the
Church. Within her religious community she has served in a number of lead-
ership roles over the years. Nationally, from 1979 to 1980, she served as pres-
ident of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She continues to
speak at conferences, workshops and she direct retreats.
Dolores R. Leckey has been a senior research fellow at the Woodstock The-
ological Center since 1998 where she is currently working on a composite bi-
ography about the late theologian Monika Hellwig. Prior to that she served
for twenty years as executive director of the Secretariat for Family, Laity,
Women and Youth of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She
is the author of eleven books, the most recent entitled Grieving with Grace
(St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2008). The recipient of twelve honorary de-
grees and numerous awards, she is the mother of four and the grandmother
of seven. She is a long-time resident of Arlington, Virginia, and now, having
recently remarried, also lives (part time) in the Hudson River Valley.
William Madges holds an MA (Div.) and a PhD degree in Christian theology

from the University of Chicago. From 1983 to 2006 he taught theology at
Xavier University (Cincinnati) and in 1999 he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar
at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He is currently dean of the Col-
lege of Arts and Sciences at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. His re-
cent publications include Vatican II Forty Years Later (Orbis Books, 2006)
and The Many Marks of the Church (Bayard/Twenty-Third Publications,
2006), which was edited with Michael J. Daley.
Gail Porter Mandell is Professor of Humanistic Studies at Saint Mary’s Col-

lege, Notre Dame, Indiana, where she holds the Schlesinger Endowed Chair
in the Humanities. She has published two books on Sister Madeleva, a lecture
delivered on the tenth anniversary of the Madeleva Lecture Series on Spiritu-
ality, sponsored by the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College (Madel-
eva: One Woman’s Life [New York: Paulist Press, 1994]), and Madeleva, a full-
length, illustrated biography of Sister Madeleva (Albany: State University of
New York, 1997).
Berard L. Marthaler, O.F.M. Conv., is Emeritus Professor of Religion and

Religious Education at the Catholic University of America. He has earned
doctorates in theology and history and is well regarded as a historian for his
work in catechetics and for his leadership in developing catechetical directo-
ries and commentaries for the Roman Catholic Church. He was the long-time
editor of the national catechetical journal, The Living Light. One of his most
popular publications is The Creed.
240 CONTRIBUTORS
Mark Massa, S.J., is the Karl Rahner Professor of Theology and co-director
of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University.
His two most recent monographs were Catholics and American Culture: Ful-
ton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team, and Anti-Catholi-
cism in America: The Last Acceptable Prejudice? He is currently working on a
monograph entitled The Catholic Sixties: The Pill, The Guitar Mass, and the
Battle for the American Church.
Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O’Brien Professor of Theology at the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame and author of Catholicism (1980; rev. ed., 1994) and The
Church: The Evolution of Catholicism (2008). He is the former chair of Notre
Dame’s Department of Theology, former Professor of Theology at Boston Col-
lege and director of its Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry,
former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, and winner of
its John Courtney Murray Award for distinguished contributions to Catholic
theology. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut.
Bishop Robert F. Morneau is currently pastor of Resurrection Parish in

Green Bay, Wisconsin. Since 1979, he has been the auxiliary bishop of the
Diocese of Green Bay and has also served as vicar general. Over the years
Bishop Morneau has directed retreats, participated in various committees for
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and written books on
prayer and spirituality. His most recent work is The Color of Gratitude (Orbis
Books, 2009).
Padraic O’Hare is Professor of Religious and Theological Studies and direc-

tor of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Mer-
rimack College. He has served as academic dean of Anna Maria College in
Massachusetts and for ten years as academic administrator of Boston College’s
Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. He received the Dr.
Maury Tye Award for Promoting Human Rights in 1999 and the Leonard P.
Zakim Humanitarian Award of the Anti-Defamation League of the North
Shore (Massachusetts) Jewish Community Center in 2002. He is the author
or editor of eight books in religious education, justice and peace, contempla-
tion practice and compassion, and comparative theology and interfaith rela-
tions. His most recent book is Spiritual Companions: Jews, Christians and In-
terreligious Relations (2006).
Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic The-

ology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Long active in ecu-
menical work, he served on the Catholic/Southern Baptist Conversation
(1994–2001), the Catholic/World Evangelical Alliance Consultation
(2001–), and presently serves on the Anglican-Catholic Dialogue in the
CONTRIBUTORS 241
United States. His books include Catholicism at the Dawn of the Third Millen-
nium (1996) Who Is Jesus? An Introduction to Christology (2003), and To-
wards a Truly Catholic Church (2005).
Karen M. Ristau is currently the ninth president of the National Catholic

Educational Association, Washington, D.C. During her years of service to
Catholic education, she has served as both teacher and administrator in
Catholic elementary and secondary schools; as a professor at the University of
St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and as vice president and dean of faculty
at Saint Mary’s College, Indiana. She is the author of books and articles on
Catholic school history and leadership issues and has received numerous
awards for service to Catholic education.
Richard Rohr, O.F.M., is a Franciscan of the New Mexico Province. He was

the founder of the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1971,
and the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, in 1986, where he currently serves as founding director. He founded
the Center to serve as a “school for prophetic thinking,” to encourage lay
leadership and what he calls “a new reformation from within.” He is proba-
bly best known for his writings and numerous audio and video recordings,
which are distributed by St. Anthony Messenger Press, Crossroad Publishers,
and Orbis Books as well as through The Mustard Seed, the CAC’s resource
center. He divides his time between working at the CAC and preaching and
teaching on all continents. His latest book is Things Hidden: Scripture as Spir-
ituality (St. Anthony Messenger Press 2007).
Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., a priest and member of the Missionary Oblates

of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San
Antonio, Texas. He is a community-builder, lecturer, and writer. His books
are popular throughout the English-speaking world and his weekly column is
carried by more than sixty newspapers worldwide. For most of the thirty-five
years of his priesthood he taught theology and philosophy at Newman Theo-
logical College in Edmonton, Alberta.
Susan A. Ross is Professor of Theology and a Faculty Scholar at Loyola Uni-

versity Chicago. She is the author of For the Beauty of the Earth: Women,
Sacramentality and Justice (Paulist, 2006) and Extravagant Affections: A
Feminist Sacramental Theology (Continuum, 1998), numerous journal articles
and book chapters, and the co-editor of five books and journal issues. She is
the recipient of a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant, the Book of the Year
Award from the College Theology Society in 1999, and the Ann O’Hara
Graff Award of the Women’s Seminar of the Catholic Theological Society of
America. She currently serves as chairperson of her Department of Theology.
242 CONTRIBUTORS
Thomas J. Shelley, a priest of the archdiocese of New York, is Professor of

Church History at Fordham University. He has a doctorate in church history
from the Catholic University of America where his mentor was John Tracy
Ellis. His most recent book is The Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of
New York, 1808–2008 (Strasbourg, 2007).
Leslie Woodcock Tentler is Professor of History at the Catholic University

of America. She is author of Catholics and Contraception: An American His-
tory (Cornell University Press, 2004) and editor of The Church Confronts
Modernity: Catholicism Since 1950 in the United States, Ireland, and Quebec
(Catholic University of America Press, 2007).
Christine Vladimiroff, O.S.B., is a Benedictine Sister of Erie, Pennsylvania.

She joined the community in 1957 and, over the years, has fulfilled a variety
of roles within the community. In 1998 she was elected to serve as prioress of
her Benedictine monastic community, a position in which she continues in
today; her third term will end July, 2010. In 2002, she was awarded U.S.
Catholic Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the Church. In Au-
gust 2003 she was elected vice-president of the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious (LCWR), an organization of the congregational leadership
that represents more than 76,000 women religious in the United States. In
August 2004 she became the president of the LCWR. She was elected presi-
dent of the Conference of Benedictine Prioresses in February, 2009 and will
serve in that position until 2013.
Index
243
244 INDEX
INDEX 245
246 INDEX
INDEX 247
248 INDEX
INDEX 249

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CXReclaimingPt.

1 11/6/09 11:57 AM Page i

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas H. Groome and Michael J. Daley.

Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0302.

All rights reserved.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward:

9. Our Ancestors Would Be Incredulous:

PART II: PERSONALITIES

16. John Courtney Murray:

21. Virgil Michel and Godfrey Diekmann:

PART III: PRACTICES

32. Questions and Answers—Again—

33. Catholic Schools: Daily Faith

This book mines the treasury of pre–Vatican II American Catholi-

Treasures Old and New

Church. Its whole project might be summarized as reclaiming a radi-

A New Moment of Opportunity for Reclamation

xii THOMAS GROOME

place, we have a new moment of opportunity to reclaim an authentic

xiv THOMAS GROOME

wisdom from the defining perspectives, personalities, and practices of

1. Constitution on the Liturgy #14, in Documents of Vatican II, ed. Wal-

As one proof for the substance of their faith tradition, Catholics

Generation X: The Times Changed

xvi MICHAEL J. DALEY

picture a poster on the door of my parish church encouraging people

Catholicism and the Simpsons

Speaking of popular culture, a television show that defines this

xviii MICHAEL J. DALEY

meant to connect one of the programs dealing with Catholicism with a

Bring on the Characters

besets the Church today—one is either liberal or conservative, pro-

Past to Present to Future

xxii MICHAEL J. DALEY

appreciation of the faith is going to take different forms depending on

In addition to Homer, I must also thank several other persons. First,

1. An excellent article on the musings of another post–Vatican II

Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward

It was 1941 in Gtreat Barrington, Massachusetts. Mary Louise Fitz-

The Catholicism I Grew Up In

Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward 5

Confirmation, Marriage, and Last Rites) at every stage in people’s per-

Almost everyone went to Mass every Sunday. I don’t remember adults

Moving Forward (or What to Bring with Us)

Reclaiming Our Past and Moving Forward 7

Younger Catholics—who have had no personal experience with

Crossing the Bridge

My strongest early memories of Catholicism are of my Italian

Growing up on suburban Long Island in the 1950s, I didn’t know

Then things began to change. I took a course on the New Testa-

mystical theology to Westerners suspended in the rigid medium of

words for its vision of a Church renewed in service of God’s mission

1. Henri De Lubac’s and Jean Danielou’s reappropriation of patristic

Studying the Bible, Then and Now

DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A.

Way Back When

On November 18, 1965, Pope Paul VI solemnly promulgated Vat-

14 DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A.