An Anomaly

"You are an anomaly," my nephews agreed, "a conservative, for sure, but not typical in any sense." They had a point: my thought would not quite fit into any current journal, movement or school. Part of this is my own tempermental peculiarity; but much has to do with what has influenced me. 10 influences come to mind:

1.  The ordinary Catholic faith I received from my family and the Church of the post-war period: traditional but open and fluid; confident, certain, sturdy, fecund.

2.  An innate love for the poor was nourished by our working class, labor union family and my  Catholic schooling and led me to college seminary with the Maryknoll Fathers.This disposition remained with me and has found happy expression late in life in Magnificat Home, our residence for low-income women.

3.  Early adulthood, tumultuous 1965-9, found me peacefully sequestered in the wholesome, semi-monastic seminary routine of study, prayer, friendship, and just enough work, recreation, rest. These years became intellectually intoxicating as I breathed deeply of the "spirit of Vatican II." I read widely in theology, culture, philosophy and the social sciences and deepened my gasp of my Catholic faith.

4.  My mentor was Pat Williams: librarian, ex-marine, ex-pugilist, father of four, autodidact, voracious reader, and a creative-independent-insightful-maverick thinker. He surprised and delighted me by his interest in and esteem for me.He modeled for me how to live and think as a lay,non-credentialed, down-to-earth, pragmatic, gospel-inspired, intelligent, fierce, passionate, counter-cultural, amateur thinker.

5.  The infamous Ivan Illich "radicalized me" and left a permanent imprint on my view of the world. Eccentric mystic, laicized priest, brilliant iconoclast...Illich proundly critiqued the entirety of modernity as technocracy and bureaucracy with a special animus against the clerical institutions of the American, my own Church. He left me with a deeper love of the Church our Mother, but a skepticism about current Church institutions and a deep suspicion of the Mega-world of meritocracy, technology and bureaucracy. 

6.  Joe Whelan, a holy and learned Jesuit priest taught the theology of prayer and Catholic spirituality at Woodstock Theologate in NYC 1970-2. He had studied Baron von Hugel on mysticism and was himself a mystic, by far my best teacher ever, and a deep influence. He unveiled for me how the Mystery of Jesus Christ animates everything that is living and beautiful in Catholicism.

7.  Charismatic movement and other lay renewal groups (cursillo, marriage encounter, Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, and later Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist) inflamed and strengthened our Catholic faith from early in our marriage.

8.  From the late 1970s, the entire pontificate of John Paul (especially his catechesis on sexuality), of Benedict, and the thought of Balthasar and the Communio school of theology continued to deepen, solidify and crystalize my theological vision.

9.  12-step spirituality (nicely complemented by the catechesis of Kiko for a period) opened for me, later in middle age, a path to freedom from persistent character defects and vices through its profound sense of powerlessness, surrender and its networks of support.

10. Early in 1971 we married. That same year saw the tyrannical dictate of Roe v. Wade and the hegemony of Cultural Liberalism: sterilization, trivialization and profanation of sexuality; deconstruction of the iconography of gender; rejection of authority, tradition and God;annihilation of the helpless; idolization of technology; and more. The trajectory of my adult life for the next 50 years has been a rejection of that tyranny and a defense of what is for me most beautiful, good and true: my faith, family, Church, the poor, the sacredness of sexuality and gender. I have tried to live, and hope to die, quietly and peacefully, as a Cultural Warrior in the image of St. John Paul II, my captain and hero.