Sad, and yet Happy, about the Class of 1969

Happily I look forward to the 50 year reunion with my classmates of Maryknoll College Seminary, Glen Ellyn, Illinois 1969. There is an extraordinary chemistry of warmth and comradarie among us as we were pretty much sequestered for those four dramatic years on a small campus where we worked, studied, prayed, played sports, horsed around and formed enduring, dear friendship as we inhaled, from a safe place (free of drugs, sex, rebellion, etc.), the powerful fumes of the exploding Cultural Revolution and the "Spirit of Vatican II." I recall the exhilaration and and excitement, especially the last few years, as we eagerly read and argued all the new views and ideas that were rushing at us. I was in a persistent state of dionysian, intellectual inebriation as I imbibed one expansive idea after another. It was an extraordinary time: the change that occurred in our Church and country in those years can hardly be equaled by any other. We were an unusual group (if I may boast!): we left our homes in 1965 at the age of 18 to give our lives as Maryknoll Missioners and bring our Catholic faith to the less fortunate in Asia, Africa and Latin America. We were altruistic, idealistic, adventurous, bright, curious, generous and pious. Four years later, 1969 at the age of 22, we were all of that still...but not pious. The majority of us (I estimate) were firmly on a path away from the faith that led us there. Now, a half a century later, it is probable that most of us, our children and now our grandchildren, are no longer practicing the Catholic sacramental life in which we were raised. This is, for me, a great sadness: my abiding and deepest passion is to share the faith we received with the coming generations. This is a great loss! And yet there is an immense irony and ambivalence for me:  these are my dearest friends! As always, to a man, they are radiant with generous energy, intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, kindness, good humor and (even more 50 years later) gentle wisdom. Their children are just as good! I enjoy them, cherish them, admire them...even as I grieve the loss of faith! What happened?

For the most part, in the 1950-65 American Church we were all moralized, liturgized and dogmatized. I mean this in a good sense: we believed in the sacraments, doctrines and the sexual and social justice ethos of Catholicism. In a mysterious manner that cannot be measured, we had a prayer life and a vague but real sense of God as Father and Source of all the goodness we had received. But we were not evangelized: we had not been clearly, persuasively invited into a concrete, personal relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ. Without that Personal Encounter, of course, the dogmas, morals and sacraments...especially removed from the supportive late-Tridintine cultural context... lack any coherence or power. In that 1965-9 period, we were not evangelized, although we were planned to be evangelizers, by the Catholic gospel; but we were proselytized by the powerful  currents of cultural liberalism.

Even in the relative safety and isolation of the seminary, we were indoctrinated in an alternate value/belief system: personal autonomy as absolute, an ethos that tore apart the harmony of sex-fruition-romance-fidelity-family, a disconnect from authority and tradition, a political liberalism, a minimization of the sacramental life, a redefinition of Evil in terms of psychological wholeness, political liberation and education, and a diminished sense of the holy and the sacred.

There are exceptions, of course! There are those who rode through the storm, untroubled, with an effortless immunity that preserved them in the faith of their youth. There are some who later experienced the "Encounter" and surrendered to a more intelligent, passionate version of their childhood faith.  And of course there are many (maybe most?) somewhere on a scale between ardent Catholic and committed Cultural Liberal.

How do I resolve the tension? I cannot deny my sadness...a soft, gentle sadness...but nevertheless a sadness...that can only be suffered. On the other hand, I see in my classmates so much of the Truth, the Good and the Beauty that we have always shared. So I will always cherish and respect them.

And I ponder the nature of faith: Faith is, first of all, a gift from above. It would be a sin to "demand" faith from one who has not received it. Faith is also a profound, mysterious reality that cannot be reduced to propositional agreement and sacramental attendance. Faith is the interior conversation of each of us with God; it is inaccessible to the outsider; it takes strange and beautiful paths. Indeed, the secular and the atheist may have deeper and truer faith, in the eyes of God, than the "practitioner" and the "believer."

And so I look forward to the delight of seeing my old friends and marveling at the good, the true and the beauty of their lives. Hopefully, we all have and are and will fulfill, with God's grace, the urgent longings that brought us together 54 years ago! But you cannot blame me for praying quietly, for them and their families, to come into the full Joy of our Catholic Faith!