The jottings this time around are more of a memoir than the usual ruminations. This came about partially from the events in our life in January which required a visit to Philadelphia and seeing the city rise before us as we were driven from the airport; and a book I had been reading called “Patches”.
The vision of the city reminded me that 40 years ago in 1966 I thought the most important thing in my life would be to get elected to the State Legislature. How puerile it seemed now!
My friend Gerry Connell sent me the book entitled “Patches”. A Jesuit priest wrote the book. He was a relative of Gerry’s now deceased wife, Claire. It brought back many memories. The priest, George Wilson knew my brothers Dick and Pat who were also Jesuit priests. He grew up in the area and speaks of people I remembered. He talked of Cardinal Dougherty, Bishop McDevitt, John Courtney Murray, and places like Wernersville, Pennsylvania, Woodstock, Maryland and Rome, Italy during the early years of Vatican II.
I received my grade school education in St. Francis de Sales Grammar School. I had sisters, or nuns if you prefer, as teachers. One nun I particularly remember was Sister Saint Arthur. She taught me twice since I had to repeat first grade! We attended this school because our designated parish school, Saint James was located on a busy street and you had to cross other very busy streets to get there. We walked to school in those days so it was an important consideration. Being the thirteenth child and the seventh son, all of these momentous decisions were made long before I needed to know or use them. I remember hearing that your children had to attend the Parish School under the threat of excommunication by Cardinal Dougherty.
St. Francis was located on 47th street and we lived just below 42nd street, so it was about a five-block walk and no busy streets to cross. We walked to class and then back to lunch at home and back to class and then home. The walks with brothers and sometimes sisters were not pleasant strolls. We hurried. We had limited time. As the youngest you were often harassed and carried others books, etc. But it was all considered the way things ought to be. I believe because we were not legal members of that parish my Dad had to pay a little extra for our attending!
The Cardinal’s ambitious school plan led in those days to one of the largest Catholic elementary school systems in the country. It covered the area of Philadelphia County and the three surrounding counties of Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks. His administration also created several high schools in Philadelphia and the outlying counties. So it was no wonder that by time my children came along to attend High School it would be named, “Cardinal Dougherty High School”. Incidentally all seven of my children attended that high school and at one time we had one student in each year!
I had Sister Saint Arthur a second year because she and my mother decided I wasn’t coming along well enough. My mother was an exceptional woman for those days she had gone to the parish school but then was accepted into Philadelphia’s Girl’s High. It was a school for only exceptional students. She was headed for a Teacher’s college next and would have been a teacher except that Dad came along and changed her vocation. So it was a natural for her to discuss the effects of the formal education on her child’s learning. Since I was the seventh son Sister Saint Arthur was to teach it is more than probable that Mom and Sister had talked in the past about one of the boys. In those days also boys and girls were taught in separate classes. I am happy to report that the failure to proceed to 2nd grade after a year in 1st , was the only time in my educational life that I repeated a grade. I spent the next 20 years at that endeavor (1934-1954). Another event that occurred since I was to repeat first grade was to meet Gerry Connell. He and I were together in school from then until high school graduation. In high school at West Catholic High we also were both on the track team. After High School Gerry went on to Villanova University and a career in engineering, I went off to Oblate Junior College, St. Joseph’s University, and then Law school and a career (?) in the law. So Gerry and I have been friends for over seventy years!
“Patches” gets its title from a lifetime hobby of Father Wilson. He made quilts from the patches he created. In his book there are some pictures of them hanging in churches around America. His mentioning of Bishop McDevitt was for reasons I can’t now recall but the bishop was part of my life for a time in the 60’s. He was an auxiliary bishop to the Cardinal, then who I think was John O’ Hara, but he was also pastor of St. Alice’s. It was a church in the suburbs of Philadelphia called “Upper Darby” During those years I helped run a social event usually ‘horse racing’, a game played with films on which people bet. The purpose of the social and the betting was to raise money for my brother Bishop Frank’s mission in Sulu Archipelago. The Bishop McDevitt made his large auditorium available for us each year. I remember the last time I did see Bishop McDevitt was several years later in the 70’s at a social at the same church. An old friend from grammar school days had invited me. The bishop was then suffering from cancer and would soon die from it but that night he was full of hope and belief that he would beat it. By that time Frank had also died and we had not been raising money for sometime. In fact the Vicariate he started and saw grow was floundering without a leader and it would be so for over the next six to seven years. Why I never would know but in the late 1990 the entire area was taken over by radical Muslims and it remains so today.
“Patches” also talked about Wernersville, Pa. It was the home of the Jesuit Novitiate of that province. A novitiate is a spiritual boot camp for aspiring seminarians. They were called ‘novices’. Pat and Dick both made their novitiate there. But also so did my brother John who after the year decided that religious life was not for him. He entered the U.S. Marines rather than be drafted. The Second World War was still in progress. He would later be shot down while a gunner on a Douglas Dive Bomber over Cotabato, a province in the southern Philippines. It was the same province where our brother Frank had started his service as a missionary priest in 1939. John survived and later there was a picture on the front page of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of John with Frank and Dick both of who had just recently been freed from Japanese interment camps.
“Patches” talks of John Courtney Murray, Jesuit theologian. He was a teacher of Theology at Woodstock, Maryland. I remember visiting there to see either Dick or Pat who were both there at different times studying theology. Father Murray was also the editor of the Jesuit magazine “America”. His superiors restricted him in the 50’s from lecturing and writing. A similar thing happened recently to the present editor of “America”. Father Murray was a popular debater and lecturer. I remember going to hear him at the Philadelphia Convention center. There was a full house but I can’t recall the subject or the other speaker. But I do recall there must have been references to the Bible and location of certain kingdoms. Following the talks the speakers allowed questions directed to them from the floor. One gentleman asked Father Murray a question and even before Father might answer the guys rants, “ If I had my maps here, I could…etc” If he said it once he said at least four or five times. When he finally sat down, Father Murray just said, “Are there any more questions?” Despite the restrictions by his superiors Father Murray was invited to Vatican II. There he “made crucial contributions to its statement on religious liberty, ‘Dignitatis Humanae’ ”. He died shortly after Vatican II ended in 1967. Father Wilson was attending Gregorian University in Rome, Italy at the same time as Vatican II for his doctorate in Theology. So it may be that in that period is when he talks about Father Murray.
Father George, the writer of “Patches” and my brother Dick had contacts with the John Kennedy’s family. Father George was the chaplain at the Georgetown University Hospital when John-john was born. He was the first outsider to see him other than those who took part in his delivery. Dick was a friend of the Robert Kennedy family and taught Bob’s wife and some of the children how to play tennis. He then was called upon after the assassination to visit to help Jackie with her grief.
Somewhere while I was reading “Patches” I came upon a bad joke about the mathematician philosopher Rene Descartes. He is remembered for his declaration of how we know we exist. He said (Cogito ergo sum!) “I think therefore I am!” In the story he is reported walking into a Bar. The bartender asks him “Would you like a beer?” To which Descartes responds “I think not!” And of course he immediately disappears! Hans Kung in a memoir writes, “The evident principles of being …by the modern approach of Rene Descartes,… with his allegedly self-evident starting point in human subjectivity… his “Cogito” (only) makes the question more acute. ‘I think therefore I am?’ Is my self really accessible? Am I not equipped with mind and will, disposition and a structure of drives, head and heart, conscious and unconscious? … Presumably there are more people than (those who) ‘think’ who say ‘I don’t want to be as I am’.. I am neither animal nor robot. I am free at the limits of my innate character and of my determination by the environment; freedom is understood as self-determination and responsibility for myself. I can experience it immediately at any moment, whenever I want…” In simple English, Kung is saying that we ‘are’ more than just ‘thinking’ animals. We have feelings and senses, good and bad that are constantly reminding us that we are alive. Just think about the last toothache or muscle pull or disappointment! Until next time Pax tecum!