An eccentric is someone "off center," different, odd, idiosyncratic, non-conventional, weird, not a normie. Sometimes it is used positively in the sense of entertaining, endearing, comical, and refreshing. By "centric" I here mean one who is properly centered, grounded, and balanced. We will see that the two do not exclude each other.
We were blessed in our family of nine (with another two fosters) by a mother and father who were strongly centric: grounded in their Catholic faith, tested and tried in youth by the Depression and WWII, ever in love with each other. Everything else fell into its proper place. We were additionally graced with eccentric family members. My maternal Uncle Billy was a purple heart WWII vet, studied at Columbia University, and spent his adult life as a mendicant entrepreneur in South America. All the time he was also an agent for US army intelligence, a spy. He lived a double life and never told a single family member. He was highly intelligent, hilariously funny, immensely idiosyncratic, a story teller, and a fascination for us. My paternal Uncle Jack was different: he fought with Patton and may have been post-trauma. He was a loner, avoiding family functions; his wife, agoraphobic, stayed home. He was in his 50s and still caddying when I started at about the age of 14. He had a job and so was not what we called "a rummy"... a drinker that caddied to pay rent and buy booze. He was affectionately called "duck" because of how he walked so I was nicknamed "little duck." I was not insulted; he seemed to elicit a quiet, respectful affection. Our great-aunt Agnes was a spinster who lived next door and was close to us. She was also "a character." She loved Robert E. Lee. This made sense as her father (my paternal great-grandfather) had fought for the confederacy upon arrival from Ireland, taught for a while as a Christian Brother, and started a dairy farm in West Orange, NJ.
I have delighted in a range of friendships over the years but am particularly drawn to eccentrics. For example, I have written about "maverick priests" whom I particularly cherish as interesting, insightful, afflicted, intuitive, entertaining, loving and lovable. I find them and they find me.
Here we will identify significant eccentrics and centrics of the last 80 years in the Church.
Top Catholic Eccentrics
These are important influencers within Catholicism whose thought was "off center" or different but in a way that was enriching, if not entirely balanced. Recall, please, that all our great reformers were eccentric in their time: Jesus and the apostles, Anthony, Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius and so on. These are prophetic figures who lean heavily and fruitfully into some reality of our faith, perhaps pushing the boundaries of our Catholic reservation in some way, but remaining overall loyal and offering us great enrichment.
Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez. Kiko left bourgeois life and buried himself with the gypsies, taking his bible, guitar and ten dogs for heat. With Carmen, he developed an entirely creative, radical, orthodox, alternative Catholicism.
Ralph Martin and Leaders of Charismatic Renewal. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, (in my view), in the wake of the Council starting in 1967, these integrated from Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism religious resources to create a distinctive Charismatic Catholicism which contrasted strongly with the dominant progressivism of the time.
Ivan Illich. Primarily a cultural critic rather than a theologian, he troubled the Vatican with his views but was voluntarily laicized to pursue his controversial advocacy. His was a most profound, broad critique of modernity (and the Church institution) as bureaucracy and technocracy. Similar views were advanced by non-Catholics Ellul, Berry, Goodman, Holt as well as Catholics Schumacher, Chesterton, Belloc.
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Maurin was an itinerant, self-taught wise man who instructed Day in a distinctive, radical, love-the-poor Catholicism. They were hardcore Catholic but politically anarchist and pacificist and so eccentric within our Church. A charming, convincing disciple today is Larry Chapp, a "communio" theologian who left academia to start a Catholic Worker farm. He is a favorite of mine for several reasons. He is by far the most comical, entertaining, living Catholic theologian. He influenced my daughter and her husband in college. He is triply eccentric as anarchist, pacifist and universalist. But his love for Christ and the Church somehow overcome these flaws.
Rene Girard. With his groundbreaking, revolutionary anthropology of mimetic desire he has in effect created a new "center" for Catholic thought that is basically consonant with and enriching of our legacy. His thought has been wonderfully presented by his disciple Gil Baile. He is more significant a contemporary thinker than Freud, Marx, Darwin or Nietzsche.
Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Balthasar is the most profound, encyclopedic, creative Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He deferred to his collaborator, the controversial mystic Adrienne von Speyr as more significant, especially for her annual Holy Saturday "descent into hell" which informed his theology of hell.
E. Michael Jones. A cranky conservative Catholic, Jones is a brilliant cultural analyst and historian. His work is flawed by a pronounced anti-Judaism which returns to earlier Catholic bias and is much too close to antisemitism. He is especially prescient in criticism of Catholic conservatisms including Neoconservativism, Pentecostalism, and Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. He is second only to Jaki in combativeness.
Simone Weil. A brilliant mystic, she died out of solidarity with the poor and suffering in WWII, having refused baptism despite her love for the suffering Christ. She is strongly "out of center" but left us tremendous insight.
Paolo Freire, Oscar Romero, Gustavo Gutierrez, Don Camara. These are the shining stars of a "liberation theology" which remains (precariously) within Catholic boundaries. They pushed our faith strongly into solidarity with the poor. Camara was archbishop in Brazil for 21 years and Mendez of Cuernavaca for 30 years. They had affinities with Illich. Cardinal Mueller, protege of Ratzinger, whose Catholic discernment is impeccable, strongly endorses liberation theology in the form offered by Gutierrez. Romero is a canonized saint.
Top Catholic Centrics
These are Church leaders and influencers who have been centered, profound, orthodox, balanced in their teaching and witness, including their demeanor/style/action. Important leadership positions in the Church especially require strong centric personalities and thinkers. Representatives:
Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Paul VI, John XXIII, Pius XII.
Theologians Dulles, D.L. Schindler, DeLubac, Danielou, Congar, Boyer, Gilson, Maritain, Hildebrandt, Stein, Pieper,
Cardinals Cantalamesa, Burke, Sarah, Mueller, Scola, Cooke, Suenens, O'Connor, George.
Bishops Varden, Barron.
Special Cases
Popes Francis and Leo.
Bergoglio was a real eccentric: intense, volatile, impulsive, intuitive, emotional, intellectually incoherent. He was his own man. Creative and insightful, he was an excellent homilist and spiritual director, but a trainwreck of a pope. Above all a pope must be centric: holding everyone together, holding the Gospel truth in all its dimensions together.
Prevost is deeply centrist in temperament, demeanor, and governing style. He looks for stability and especially unity in the Church. Theologically he is influenced by the progressivism of Francis and lacks depth, clarity and decisiveness in orthodoxy.
Holy Ones Who Go "Catholic Weird"
Padre Pio, Mother Theresa, all stigmatists, healers, bi-locators, levitators, exorcists, hermits, and postmortem in-corrupts.
Eccentric Centrics
The following were deeply centric in thought and life as they were eccentric, idiosyncratic and immensely entertaining in personality.
Blessed Fulton Sheen: flamboyant, histrionic; famously fought with powerful Cardinal Spellman over money for the missions; and got in trouble late in life for his zeal for racial justice.
Mother Angelica: Immensely influential with EWTN as down-to-earth, populist, crusty Italian Catholic.
Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete: Sophisticated, NY, priest, writer-speaker celebrity; leader of American Communion and Liberation; hilariously entertaining; spent the last years of his life caring sacrificially for his disabled brother.
Flannery O'Connor: Immensely creative and entertaining; fiercely Catholic.
Fr. Stanley Jaki: Brilliant scientist/philosopher famous for his fierce combativeness.
Elizabeth Anscombe: Protege of Wittgenstein; cigar-smoking, custom-defying, Humanae Vitae endorsing, atom-bomb condemning, mother of seven. Probably the most eccentric of all!
Caryl Houselander: Inspirational writer who suffered anxiety and had an extraordinary, non-professional gift for helping those suffering mental and emotional anguish.
Heather King: Recovering alcoholic, convert, a contemporary Caryl Houselander.
Founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal were largely eccentric centrics: Groeschel, Sudano, Fortuna, Pio, and Apostoli.
The John Paul Institute for the Family in Washington DC seems to attract eccentric centrics: Adrian Walker, Paolo Prosperi, Michael Walker and others are balanced by sound centrics like Healy, Schindler, Antonio Lopez and others.
Stephen Adubato, curator of "Cracks in Modernity," a friend, and the most promising up-and-coming eccentric centric.
Conclusion
Notice that most of these were alive and active during and after the Council. Those were the years of my own adolescence and early adulthood. There were times of immense ferment in the Church. These significant figures are orthodox theologically, but moving zealously into prayer, contemplation and the mystical side of Catholicism. Many of them identify strongly with the poor and marginalized. They also include critiques of modernity as technological/bureaucratic/meritocratic. They coinhere in a traditional yet contemporary Catholicism that is renunciatory of cultural progressivism without being a retreat to a Church of the past.
Do you, dear Reader, share my delight, admiration, and gratitude in considering these inspiring, entertaining, radiant persons? It has been a wonderful time to be Catholic!
Praise God!
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