Greater Glory : Thirty-Seven Years with the Jesuits [1 ed.] 9780773576230, 9780773532434

Citation preview

The Greater Glory

footprints series jane errington, editor

The life stories of individual women and men who were participants in interesting events help nuance larger historical narratives, at times reinforcing those narratives, at other times contradicting them. The Footprints series introduces extraordinary Canadians, past and present, who have led fascinating and important lives at home and throughout the world. The series includes primarily original manuscripts but may consider the English-language translation of works that have already appeared in another language. The editor of the series welcomes inquiries from authors. If you are in the process of completing a manuscript that you think might fit into the series, please contact her, care of McGill-Queen’s University Press, 3430 McTavish Street, Montreal, QC H3A 1X9. Blatant Injustice The Story of a Jewish Refugee from Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II Walter W. Igersheimer Edited and with a foreword by Ian Darragh

Against the Current Memoirs Boris Ragula

Margaret Macdonald Imperial Daughter Susan Mann

My Life at the Bar and Beyond Alex K. Paterson

Red Travellers Jeanne Corbin and Her Comrades Andrée Lévesque

The Teeth of Time Remembering Pierre Elliott Trudeau Ramsay Cook

The Greater Glory Thirty-seven Years with the Jesuits Stephen Casey

The Greater Glory Thirty-seven Years with the Jesuits stephen casey

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2007 isbn: 978-0-7735-3243-4 Legal deposit second quarter 2007 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Casey, Stephen The greater glory: thirty-seven years with the Jesuits / Stephen Casey. (Footprints series) Includes index. isbn 978-0-7735-3243-4 1. Casey, Stephen. 2. Jesuits – Canada – Biography. i. Title. ii. Series. bx4668.3.c38a3 20007

Typeset in Adobe Caslon 11.5/14 by Infoscan Collette, Quebec City

255'.530092

c2006-906013-4

To my dear wife, Emilia, without whose encouragement and support this memoir could not have been written.

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Preface

ix

1 221 Yale

3

2 The Nuns 3 Scruples

27 38

4 “Soft Lydian Airs”

51

5 “Elected Silence” 6 Repetition 7 No Kant

67

107 116

8 “Get the Grass Seed” 9 The “Ad Grad”

154

10 The Third Degree 11 Scotland Yard

144

173

183

12 Sleeping with the Mummy 13 The Greater Glory

214

14 “Pastures New”

230

Acknowledgments

239

Index

241

195

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

twenty years ago I intended to write the story of my life, a memoir of my fifty-seven years until then. I put the idea aside as those events and my feelings at the time seemed too close, too fresh, perhaps too painful, to form any kind of balanced evaluation of what had happened during those years. Now that I am safely removed from those times I feel ready to write about that period, especially my thirty-seven years in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), from the middle to the mid-eighties of the last century. Why would I write such a story? I postponed this project for all those years, but I feel that now, before it is too late, I should record this modicum of history and examine a structure, a method, a point of view that is past, never to return, yet also a structure by which many of us today, even those who were born after that period, are still influenced, and in which in a sense some of us still share. Over the centuries the Jesuits have been one of the most powerful and effective institutions in the Catholic Church and their constitutions and manner of life have influenced many of the Catholic religious congregations, including the nuns, over the past 500 years. In Quebec, for example, until thirty years ago almost every family had at least one priest, nun, or brother in one or other of the multitudinous religious groups in the province. Now that phenomenon has irretrievably vanished, but it is still part of the history of Quebec, of Canada, and of Christianity. It is with some hesitation that I write about my time with the Jesuits, who have striven for centuries with astounding success to

x

The Greater Glory

serve the church, the pope, and humankind throughout the world and who kept me in their ranks and treated me with kindness and much understanding for so many years. In that large organization of some 36,000 members in the 1960s – now down to 19,000 in 2005 – I was only a minor player, but at the same time I served as one of its loyal members, living its life to the best of my ability and following its rules and constitutions for thirty-seven years. I was, therefore, in a position to observe not only what transpired during those years but also to assess and pass judgment on the spirit and dynamics that animated this extraordinary group of men. It is not my intention to distress any of its members or attack its constitutions. Most Jesuits I attempt to delineate are dead, some I criticize, others I praise. I intend to describe the events of my life in the Order as I experienced them and to evaluate their impact on me and on those around me. I wish to show not only how and where I failed to carry out the mandates of the Order but also how and where I feel the Order failed or was unable to assist me as I tried to live its way of life as a conscientious member. This is not an apologia, it is a memoir, a history of the events that I lived through for over fifty years in the last two-thirds of the twentieth century. It focuses mainly on my life in the Jesuit Order but it also includes my childhood and growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as an important preliminary to that later period. Some twenty years ago I wrote about an obscure figure by the name of Lactantius in the time of the Later Roman Empire. I feel a certain affinity with him because he was concerned with and wrote about the radical shift in outlook and belief that occurred at that time, from a traditional and universal belief in the gods of the Roman pantheon and the culture accompanying it that had lasted for over 500 years, to a new and startling outlook and belief, Christianity, that embraced a monotheistic deity, a comprehensive doctrine, and an inflexible morality. In a somewhat similar way, I, an obscure figure in the twentieth century, lived through the climax and decline of an antiquated system in a comparable shift of viewpoint and belief during my thirty-seven years in the Jesuit Order, beginning in the years after the Second World War. The old system that had lasted for

Preface

xi

1,500 years was changing – and to many, crumbling – and a new attitude, a new code of behaviour, a new culture, a new kind of faith, though not a new faith, were imperceptibly yet inexorably sweeping away the old and establishing themselves as the dominant world view in the western world. In this memoir I describe and comment on a small segment of the events, structures, and circumstances that immediately preceded this dramatic change.

Larcy, Que, and I – with our dog Patsy – at our cottage on Lake Winnipeg, 1938.

At the beginning of high school, Winnipeg, 1940.

Buzz, home on leave, and I, winter, 1945.

On the summit of Mount Edith, Banff, 1947.

At the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, 1970s.

Mother and I at Jesuit Juniorate, Guelph, March, 1950.

Cutting a birthday cake for the grandchildren.

This page intentionally left blank

The Greater Glory

This page intentionally left blank

1

221 Yale

old doctor “davey” was telephoned – only five digits in those days – to come at once. Dr Davison lived only three blocks away in a fine old house at the end of our street where Yale meets Ruskin Row. He had come before: now he was here to deliver mother’s fifth and second-last child, me, six pounds, ten ounces. Everything went well, and the baptism took place a week later, performed by Father Edward O’Gara, our beloved pastor of St Ignatius Church. The first vague memory I have of my existence was being coaxed by my father to take my first steps from my mother’s arms to his, some two feet away. We lived, all seven of us, the third child having died as an infant, in a large house at 221 Yale Avenue in Winnipeg, second from the corner on the north side. The house was a Tudor-style structure of three floors, off-white stucco with brown wooden slats across the stucco, and brown shingles on the roof and up to the stucco on the second floor. Mother and Dad had purchased it when it was quite new in 1919 for $12,000, a large sum for those days. It was full of windows and faced south, but to open the house even more to the glorious Winnipeg sun my mother over the years had at least four more windows cut into the west and east sides, “bursting another window” was her phrase. The result was a very cheery atmosphere, always full of light even on the dullest days. That was the Casey home for over fifty years until my father died. We five children were three boys and two girls. My sister Monina (little Mona) was the eldest, followed by Buzz (William Joy), then

4

The Greater Glory

the baby who died. Que (McHugh), who was five years younger than Buzz, came next, then myself, and lastly Mary Anne, nicknamed Larcy. Monina and Buzz were nine and seven years older than myself, and so almost of another generation for us younger three. I was closest to Larcy. We were inseparable and did everything together, playing house with the library chairs and rugs, even bouncing down the front stairs on the upper-hall rug. I was her protector and we remained like twins until I left home. We were a closely knit family, but with Monina and Buzz out of reach, and Larcy and I off on our own, Que was left in the middle and had to fend for himself. Very early on it was clear that he was artistic, drawing, painting, sculpting. He had a very fine stamp collection, specializing in the United States, Canada and the British Colonies, and occasionally I would help him mount his stamps in one or other of his albums, especially the colourful British Colonies. Mother was a cheerful, witty woman. She loved us all, but we didn’t cross her; she was Victorian in demanding strict obedience with no answering back. “Don’t be cheeky,” and “Bold as brass” were a few of her favourite admonitions. Spoiling, as she would announce, was not in her vocabulary, yet at the same time she was extremely solicitous for our well-being. She didn’t have to reprimand by words: a look, a direct, stern look, was sufficient to melt any opposition, to make any of us pull back and fall into line once again. We five rarely quarreled, much less raised our voices to one another; there must have been differences of opinion but they would have been expressed in a more or less civilized exchange. The evening meal, always at 6:30, was often the only time we all got together as the years went by. It was somewhat formal, presided over by my mother and father and served by our maid in full uniform. Yet the atmosphere was fairly relaxed, with mother doing most of the talking and Dad adding his spice. We children chipped in with our stories of the day’s little episodes and experiences. Dad would always ask each one of us whether we had any “Specials” to report – that is anything out of the ordinary, especially laudatory reports from our teachers. He carved and served the meat and mother served the vegetables and gravy. I sat on Dad’s left and Larcy on his right between Dad and Mom, and

221 Yale

5

then around the table, Monina, Buzz, and Que on my left. If anyone was late, a hot plate was kept ready in the oven. The overall atmosphere was typically Victorian, “children to be seen and not heard,” and was to be found in many a family across the country. Mother insisted on our taking regular sun-lamp treatments with an archaic lamp all through the winter. The purpose was to obtain the benefit of sun rays denied to our bodies by the seven-month western freeze-up. The lamp was purchased at a great price and was probably one of the first of its kind. It had long, thin carbon rods that glowed and crackled and couldn’t be looked at except through goggles. A few times a week, as the temperature hovered at forty below outside, we three youngest exposed our skin to the lamp to tide us over the winter. As soon as spring allowed, mother sent us outside to catch the sun in the back yard. We had salads every day when lettuce and tomatoes were very expensive, and daily doses of cod liver oil. Since Larcy and I were presumed to have weak ankles, Mom made us strengthen them by walking around the rug on the outside of our feet, and she bought us special boots which we wore with some embarrassment until we were twelve. What was most memorable, though, was her reading to us in the library upstairs. It wasn’t really a library, although it contained a few books on a handsome oak stand, but a kind of family room where we all congregated after we had finished our homework. Mother was an avid reader and began early in our lives to read to us Dickens, Stevenson, and Scott. With the curtains pulled against the cold outside and my father in grandma’s straightbacked chair on the other side of the room, we would pile onto the couch beside her or stand behind as she read to us David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop, Treasure Island. Our Dickens set was bound in red leather, and the India-paper text contained the marvelous Cruickshank illustrations. I can still see old Quilp, Sally Brass, the Marchioness, Simon Tappertit, and so forth glaring at us from the page. With her pince-nez’s perched on her nose, Mom read on and on in her melodious and entrancing voice. It was soon time to go to bed, but we would beg for “just one more chapter.” She always relented and carried on.

6

The Greater Glory

Mother was almost always at home when we returned from school. On the few days she wasn’t, she made sure the maid was there to greet us. I was always anxious to get home and was happy to be there. I would run like a deer the half-mile from school and dash in and have something to eat. Invariably, Mom would have an interesting story to relate about her day. It usually was some trivial matter, but she would weave it in such a way as to make it, not exaggerated, not dramatized, but simply interesting. Perhaps it was just that I loved her and wanted to be near her. The few afternoons she wasn’t home she would be off to her bridge group, which consisted of other women with large families and the children finally all in school. She had many tales about the conversations at the bridge table and especially the bidding and playing, which often were not up to her high standards. The other days she went out, picking up her friends on the way in our huge Hudson, were given over to her insatiable desire to perfect her French at two salons, l’heure française, and l’alliance française. Her mother was French and spoke the language fluently, but Mom had grown up speaking little French except with her mother. Now that grandfather was dead, grandma had an oldcountry French housekeeper, Mme.Trimmitt, who spoke no English. After grandma had questioned each one of us children closely about how we had behaved and had handed out a single peppermint if she were satisfied, she would send us off to the kitchen where Mme. Trimmitt would give us a treat of a slice of white bread covered with butter and brown sugar. With us out of the way, grandma and mother would chat away, “causer,” for an hour or two. During those daily visits mother improved her facility greatly but not sufficiently to satisfy herself, so she enrolled in the two groups along with other English-speaking women to enhance her knowledge. She even hired young French-Canadian women from the country to work for us. As a result she eventually mastered the language and then tried to pass that proficiency on to us. Later, when I was a teen-ager, she encouraged me to work in a French-Canadian country store for a few weeks to shore up my halting French, but the staff were always practising their English on me and I wasn’t aggressive enough to tell them my purpose in

221 Yale

7

being there. So, apart from a smattering, we children learned little French in our devastatingly English environment. However, my older sister later spent two happy years in a French convent-school and learned the language well. We used to visit her at St Adolph every Sunday, taking the mud road down the slope onto the ferry across the Red River and in spring and fall getting stuck every time. In winter we used to be met at the highway with a closedin cutter pulled by a single horse and we would race across the ice and snow of the prairie landscape. The nuns there were Filles de la Croix, very friendly to us children and a source of great wonder to us in their elongated coifs that required a complete turning of the head to face us as they tried to get us to speak a few words of French. We boys were often warned that the best thing for us would be to cross the river into St Boniface and attend a French boys’ school there. Unfortunately, mother never carried out her threat: at that time the two worlds were poles apart. My father was a very affectionate man, forever hugging and kissing us children. He was a Maritimer, born in Moncton in 1882. After graduating from high school, where he had studied Latin, he began working at the old Inter-Colonial Railway in Moncton. He worked in the ticket office at this hub of the Maritimes from 12 noon until 3 a.m., when the last train passed through, and was paid $33 a month. In 1901 he was invited to join the newly formed Canadian Pacific Steamship Company in Halifax. His main task was to meet the company’s immigrant ships that docked temporarily in Halifax, board the ships, and then, on the voyage to St. John, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, make out train tickets for the immigrants and ensure that they got on to their colonist cars for their long and tedious trip to the land they had been assigned in Western Canada. He was transferred to Canadian Pacific’s headquarters in Montreal in 1910 and then sent to Winnipeg in 1915 to be in charge of the company’s steamship offices in the West. Many often said to me, “Well, that couldn’t have been much of a job, since obviously there are no ships on the Prairies.” Over the years he oversaw the transfer of thousands of immigrants to their homesteads, all of whom passed through Winnipeg. After the First World War the Polish

8

The Greater Glory

Government made him Honorary Consul of the city, though he never learned a word of any continental language. But he had a large staff that spoke a babel of languages, such as Mr Workentin who spoke nine. Besides, the majority of the inhabitants of Winnipeg, which in the thirties had a population of a quarter million, were from the United Kingdom and were constantly returning to their relatives and old homes in England and Scotland. During the Second World War Dad would often leave Winnipeg and take the long train journey to Halifax with no explanation. We children learned what he was about only after the war when a long article in the Winnipeg Tribune told of his contribution to the war effort when he oversaw the change-over of the cp ships from passenger use to troop accommodation. Every morning and noon before we rushed off to school, Dad would meticulously check our appearance, hair well combed, nails cleaned. If there happened to be a spot of dirt under any nail, he would scrape it clean with the pick on his gold watch chain. We had to be just right. Then before we left he would caution us to watch out for the cars and traffic. Not that there was anything resembling a rush hour in the mid-thirties. Once, though, when Larcy and I were racing back to school, we didn’t look when crossing a lane and we felt right against our faces the heavy breathing of two huge horses of a garbage wagon plodding slowly forward. Before I started school Dad taught me the alphabet, to write letters and even a few words, which gave me a nice start when I entered school at six the following fall. Mother and he also taught me my prayers, which I used to say at his knee every night until I was twelve. There was no compulsion, not even urging. I just wanted to learn all the prayers they knew and said. Dad wasn’t an overly religious man but he said his prayers on his knees every morning after breakfast before he went off to the office. Later we all said the Rosary together but that pious practice didn’t last long. Going down the backstairs one time I caught a huge splinter on my left hand from the banister. Dad took me by the other hand and, since it was a weekend, he walked me the half block to a doctor’s house for the extraction. No waiting, no difficulty, and so, soon back home. If there was anything awry with us children, it

221 Yale

9

would be enough for him to say, “Oh, Oh,” and the altercation would stop and be resolved. Dad was a prominent man in the Winnipeg community. He knew hundreds of families through arranging for their transportation by sea to the old country. At that time “The Big Company,” as my father called the Canadian Pacific, had a large fleet of ships plying back and forth across the Atlantic. Their flagship was the beautiful Empress of Britain, 42,500 tons, then the Empress of Australia, four smaller “Duchess” ships and three “Monts.” A few years later in the Second World War, most of those nine ships were sunk, the Empress of Britain while unescorted in the Bay of Biscay, the two surviving “Duchesses,” the Bedford, and the Richmond, becoming the Empress of France and the Empress of Canada respectively after the war. Most of the Pacific fleet was also sunk except, ironically, the Empress of Japan, 26,000 tons, which became the Empress of Scotland after Pearl Harbor. Dad also knew all the important businessmen in the city through his membership in the Manitoba Club and St Charles Golf and Country Club. He used to slip over to the Manitoba Club for bridge on a quiet afternoon and always looked forward to the New Year’s levee, dressed in his morning suit that he wore only on that occasion. He was also active in the Winnipeg branch of the Maritime Provinces’ Association, which was one of the most prominent institutions in the city. Hundreds of Maritimers, including Sydney Smith, president of the University of Manitoba, and Archbishop Sinnott, the Catholic bishop of Winnipeg, belonged to it and attended the grandiose annual banquet. Dad was a golf addict and played to a fifteen handicap in his best years, despite an elongated left-handed backswing. He was president of St Charles Country Club for two terms in the mid-thirties, and during his tenure he once settled a nasty caddy strike that threatened violence. Mother’s family had a large wholesale-grocery business. Every month the gates of our backyard would be opened and a huge truck with solid rubber tires would back on to the grass and unload cartons of foodstuff into the basement. What I remember were the rows upon rows of canned goods, but mostly the umbrellas of dried figs, packed in long, narrow wooden boxes which we kids

10

The Greater Glory

would soon pry open and then help ourselves to the contents. Unfortunately this largesse, which I trust was paid for in wholesale prices, ceased in 1935 when Marrin Brothers declared bankruptcy. They had overreached themselves, so I was told, by buying out their cousins in 1931, in the early Depression, for a million dollars cash. Mother somehow salvaged some money from the loss as the Marrin girls, five of them, retained some real estate from which there came a regular monthly revenue. With that she was able to buy a few extras for the children, and a few things for herself. Mother was not extravagant, though she had good taste and always dressed elegantly. Perhaps the only extravagance she did allow herself was the buying of hats: every spring she had a new hat for Easter, usually a straw, and every fall a felt for winter. They were all large and floppy, often with a veil, and all purchased only at Hollingsworth’s, Holt Renfrew’s, or at the so-called French Room at Eaton’s. Larcy and I were often brought along, and we watched while mother tried on twenty to thirty different hats before she was satisfied. My father had a good income but as the Depression deepened everyone’s income was reduced. Mother insisted that part of Dad’s salary be deposited in her account each month to run the house. It was a sensible but rather uncommon practice for housewives in those days, but then she knew exactly how much she had to spend month by month. She was especially kind to the unfortunate: she never passed a beggar on the street without giving us children the money to hand over to the beggar; in that way it would be less humiliating for the man. Every night in the thirties the homeless would make their way across the two bridges of the Assiniboine River towards the more affluent parts of town to ask for food. Around supper-time you could see a lonely file of single men trudging across the bridges and down the lanes. They had the houses that would receive them marked with chalk on the back fence. Mother would not only be ready for them but would chat with them, asking about themselves and their families while they munched on a sandwich and a piece of pie. She knew every deliveryman by name and all about their families, Ted the Eaton’s driver, Joe the milkman, Jim the breadman: she had a coffee or cookie for all of them. In the winter Ted

221 Yale

11

had a blue and red wagon on runners, pulled by a magnificent horse. All deliveries were by horse, and the Eaton’s horses outshone all the others. The men were tough and delivered every day except Sunday, free of charge, rain, cold, or snow. Mother was also kind to our maids. In those days everyone who could afford it hired live-in staff to cook, clean, and look after the children. They weren’t paid much, $15 to $17 a month, with board and room, of course, Thursdays all day and Sunday afternoons off. The pay sounds incredibly low by today’s standards but that was the going rate and the young women were glad to get off the farms and into the city. Running water and electricity were new to them. Most of the girls we had were either Polish or Ukrainian, but as it was their parents who had emigrated either before or just after the First World War, they spoke perfect English, having attended the small but excellent rural schools for at least eight years. Dedicated, selfless teachers throughout the province of Manitoba produced a whole generation of immigrant children who could read, write, and spell as well as any child in the city. We children loved every one of them, and I think that that affection was returned. We picked up a little Polish and Ukrainian from them along the way, now long forgotten, except that I can still recite the Our Father in Ukrainian. In the summers they came with us to our vacation spots and joined in most of the fun we kids had. Once in Banff, a loud scream emanated from the kitchen. We all rushed to see a huge black bear glaring into the window at Helen. It took quite a while for my mother and father to calm her down. For some years we also had an extra cleaning lady, Mrs. Roth, a German who hated Hitler, and a washerwoman, Julia, an Austrian, who also hated Hitler until she heard him on short-wave radio and soon she was gone, enticed back by the demagogue to die for the Fatherland. Julia was a fine, hard-working woman and I can still see her bent double over the black stone sinks that were incredibly low, rubbing the soapy clothes (with Sunlight) up and down with her hands on the rough washboard. In the basement, too, was the larder, crammed with jars of pickles and jams made in the fall by my mother who, though she never enjoyed the labour, faithfully stocked the larder for the winter.

12

The Greater Glory

The huge furnace was in another part of the basement. At first it was stoked with wood, beautiful white birch that my father split in half, and then later with briquettes, small compressed pieces of coal, taken care of by my Dad who earlier on seemed to enjoy tending the furnace himself but was happy at last when steamheat took over. We boys helped to pile the wood but we were too young to be trusted to the tending which had to be done morning and night and at least once during the day when my father came home for lunch. I can still hear the crackle and then the roar of the dry birch and see the glow of the briquettes through the slide of the steel front door. Occasionally the whole family went tobogganing at River Park on the Red River. The low prairie river banks were enhanced by lofty wooden frames so that the drop would be a hundred feet or so. Climbing up the steep stairs pulling the toboggan was frightening enough, and though there was an attendant on the send-off to tuck every one on board, being placed in the last spot overhanging the stairs was a very scary experience for an eight-year old until the attendant shoved the toboggan forward down the slope. The first car I remember was a 1926 Maxwell, a coach as it was known, with two enormous doors, large enough to insert a gigantic baby carriage on the floor of the back section. It was dark blue and had movable striped awnings on the side windows and handwipers on the front windshield. Our next car was a ’29 Hudson, a vehicule big enough for all seven of us. After considerable maneuvering, it just fitted into our small garage located off the back lane, but mother’s and father’s bad driving kept tearing large chunks of wood from the door jams and the two-by-fours on the walls. If the car were parked in front of the house, we kids would sit in it by the hour and play house; we also learned quickly that even without the key we could make the big Hudson lurch forward by putting it in gear and pressing down on the foot-starter. Mother had learned to drive fairly early, taught by her mother’s chauffeur before she was married, but having learned when few had cars, she was oblivious to the presence of other cars when traffic increased through the years. She was quite heavy on the accelerator and to the embarrassment of us kids cringing in the

221 Yale

13

back seat she scared the wits out of jaywalkers with her vigorous honking when the light turned green. She was in several accidents, not serious fortunately, and of course they were not her fault but “some other fools,” she would say, coming out of nowhere like a “bat out of hell.” However, the dented fenders were heavy steel and easily hammered back into place. Dad didn’t learn to drive until his early thirties and never could adjust to the increased volume of traffic, breezing along past intersections without looking left or right, but he liked to drive, especially to the golf course or down to the cottage after we got a series of Oldsmobiles in the late thirties, the ’36 Olds costing $1,400. At the end of October the car would be “laid up,” as it were, in the garage for the winter, battery drained, chassis jacked up off the floor to save the tires. Few cars ran all winter: too cold, too icy. The streets and sidewalks relied on horse-drawn ploughs for clearance, and the snow remained packed into ice almost a foot thick on all but the main arteries. Mother insisted that we all learn to drive as early as possible. I started at twelve at the cottage, and the rest did the same so that when we turned sixteen Dad simply went down to the licence bureau and paid the two dollars; no test, written or driving. After I was sixteen Mother would ask me to park the car in the tight garage or, if I wasn’t at school or busy, to take her and her friends out for a drive, usually to Assiniboine Park. She was constantly inviting her poorer or shut-in friends for a drive, friends who otherwise would have been cooped up in their tiny apartments. They were all treated the same, rich, poor, lame, it didn’t matter. The conversation was always lively, so I didn’t mind a bit, especially if there were tea and cakes afterwards. We all trooped off to church every Sunday, usually by car, although on warm days we walked. We had our own pew, second on the left side of the main aisle, and generally went to the 10:15 Mass. I can still remember the Hayden sisters, middle-aged and unmarried with heavy face-powder that we could smell, right in front of us in the front pew with their black seal coats, going to Communion and then, back at their pew, bowing so low in adoration that their heads were lost sight of, with only the huge seal coats and collars to be seen as if they were on racks. We children

14

The Greater Glory

usually behaved well, but if occasionally we began to giggle at the seal coats in front or at the priest’s sermon, mother would give us a glare, and if we persisted, she would whisper menacingly, “Wait until we get home.” It was an awesome warning. The sermon was usually uninspiring, and most of us went to Communion. My First Communion at seven years old was a memorable event. Starting school at the nearby public school, I had a wonderful teacher named Miss Philip whose standards were high and demanding, although she changed my writing hand from left to right as was the custom then. After Easter I changed to the Catholic school, St Ignatius, to prepare for my First Communion and Confirmation in May. The day before Communion I contracted a fever. All the preparations had been made, including my little white suit with the sailor collar. The bishop was to preside, Archbishop Sinnott, a Prince Edward Islander as so many of the clerics in the West were then, a compelling orator and a friend of my father. The fever became worse around midnight and, unable to sleep, I became very thirsty. The rule then for Communion, though, was fasting from midnight, no food, of course, and not even a sip of liquid. It is hard to grasp now not only the strictness of the prescription but also the severity of the obligation on one’s conscience, not to mention the importance of the occasion for me. Though mother was very observant, she was never at a loss what to do at any time. I couldn’t drink, but she compensated by dampening my face with a wet washcloth every ten minutes or so, and thus she spent most of the night at my bedside, hoping that the fever would break by morning. It didn’t, and by seven my body was covered with red blotches and pimples – chicken pox. She phoned the parish rectory and the wise old pastor said: “Bring the boy in to the side chapel, away from the other children, and I will give him his First Communion by himself, and then at the end of the ceremony the Archbishop will confirm him privately.” There is a picture taken in the back yard showing me piously holding a rosary and a prayer book. On Sunday evening at 7:30 Mom would often go off to Benediction at St Ignatius, and I would usually accompany her. At this evening service the Host would be placed in a large repository

221 Yale

15

called a monstrance and placed on the altar for all to see and worship. There were hymns and prayers, but the service was short, lasting only fifteen minutes. The blaze of the golden monstrance flanked by two seven-branch candle-sticks on either side of the altar as the priest, dressed in flowing cope, grasped the monstrance with his glittering humeral veil (a kind of shawl) and blessed the congregation, who were bowing as low as they could, made a deep impression on me. On the street where we lived there were only a few Catholics, two or three in the entire block of nine houses on each side. Everyone was white, of course, most being Anglicans or Presbyterians. They were friendly to us Catholics with five romping children, but generally their lives were lived on another plane. For the most part they were older and had already brought up their children, who were either married or away at school. Directly across the street were the Coynes, one of whose sons was a close friend of my older brother Buzz. Both Coyne boys were Rhodes Scholars and Jimmy became governor of the Bank of Canada. The father, Judge Coyne, used to open his door about nine and, in a kind of ritual, stretch his arms skyward a few times and breathe in the clean morning air. The second son, Jackie, had a fine collection of toy soldiers, which I was once allowed to see. All the houses in our neighborhood, Crescentwood as it was called, were large and spacious. The grass boulevards were wide, the front lawns green and luxuriant. The backyards, usually smaller, opened up onto paved lanes where hollyhocks grew along the fences. Our backyard was obscured by trees and the garage, but the shade kept the sand in the sand pile moist for building forts and castles. My brother Que and I had one friend on the street, five houses down, Bob McKinney. He was the same age as Que, twelve when we first met him, and he was one of the nicest kids I knew. Like his father and sister, he had flaming red hair, and he was tough, courageous, and very creative. We got into a lot of things we shouldn’t have gotten into, but most of the escapades were innocent though occasionally dangerous. Once we decided to go down from the second storey of his house not by the ordinary route but out of a window. He tied ropes and belts together and climbed

16

The Greater Glory

onto the sill of a fifteen-foot drop. Of course he went first, but as he let himself down the rope snapped and he fell about twelve feet onto his back on a wooden sidewalk. He obviously hurt himself but he immediately jumped up with a smile on his face, ready for something else. Another time he dismantled a shotgun shell of his father’s, filled some glass tubing from his chemistry set with powder and shot, lined up some lead soldiers about ten feet away, aimed the tubing and then lit a fuse to the powder stuffed in the glass tubing. The soldiers’ heads were neatly blown off, but the glass exploded in every direction, tiny shards embedded in our hands, arms, and even our faces. We also built a fort under the back of his house. The entry was secret, accessible by removing, then replacing, a panel, crawling on one’s stomach across the bare earth about twenty feet, then through another trap, and finally into the fort itself. The earth was covered with an old rug, and we had cushions to sit and rest on and even electric lamps. It was quiet, sequestered, mysterious. We alone used it and knew of its existence. My brother and I, twelve and ten years old, also learned the facts of life from Bob, who seemed to know much about a lot of things. The information he imparted was partial and garbled, of course, but there was nothing sinister or even clandestine about it. No after-effects, no bad memories. Bob married early, joined the Air Force, and was killed in North Africa, one of the few Canadians to die there in World War Two. Mother was an avid reader, as I have mentioned. It rubbed off on some of the children, but mostly on me, I think. Early on I read Grimm’s Fairy Tales and old copies of my brother’s Boys’ Chum which I liked, and I began to read our Books of Knowledge, but the first real novel I read was Conan Doyle’s The White Company. I can still see Sir Nigel “pricking on the plaine.” Ivanhoe was next, but I also began to devour the newspapers, especially when World War Two began when I was thirteen. Though real news was scanty, I followed the monthly shipping losses and knew enough even then to realize that 200,000 tons was a frightening figure. I didn’t read much in high school except the required Dickens, Hardy and George Eliot, but in the university years I

221 Yale

17

read whenever there was time. Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited I read through all one night when it came out just after the war. On my trusty bike, I used to bring home several books a week for mother, and occasionally one or two for myself. Que, Larcy, and I went through all the childhood diseases, mumps, chicken pox as I mentioned, measles (both kinds), whooping cough, scarlet fever. The last was the worst, complete isolation with the blinds pulled down and a green sign on the outside door warning visitors away. My brother and I came down with pneumonia twice, falling down on the floor when trying to get out of bed. I also was subjected to bilious attacks every six weeks or so, which lasted three days. Throwing up on an empty stomach was not pleasant, but what was pleasant was that during the day any one of us kids who was sick was put into mother’s and father’s big bed on the second floor and treated like royalty with ginger ale and ice cream. When we were well, on Saturday mornings we three younger ones would pile into the four-poster and romp and wrestle with our parents. None of us seemed to have suffered any after-effects from all those maladies. Our doctor came once to lance my ear and another time during the bout of pneumonia, but apart from that no one, to my knowledge, ever required a further visit from him, nor did any of us ever have to go to the hospital in all those years of growing up, and of course all of us were born at home in the big double bed. I suppose that our family might have been labeled uppermiddle class. Even in the depth of the Depression we wanted for little except luxuries. My father’s salary was reduced like everyone’s, but staples were cheap, milk ten cents a quart, bread ten cents a loaf, a fair meal out for just over a dollar. Que and I were always dressed in sailor suits in the German style of the day, although then only a dozen years away from the First World War, with the small round soft hats and long black ribbons, and reefer jackets with the brass buttons. Once after a rain we were warned that if we ran too fast and fell in the mud, soiling our reefers, “I will pull your ears a yard long,” the most severe and uncharacteristic warning we ever received. We wore short pants both summer and winter, with itchy long, brown woolen stockings in winter. As

18

The Greater Glory

the years advanced we moved into breeches in winter and leather jackets. I was so proud of my first dress coat, grey worsted, which I wore until it rose well above my knees. It was nice to dress up a bit for Sunday Mass and even for funerals. My mother wouldn’t miss any of her friends’ funerals and often we would be brought along. After shedding a few tears she would drive her friends who had no car home and enjoy an interesting exchange of news as the old Hudson roared along on the car-free streets, with us kids in the back listening to every word. I didn’t have many toys but I did have a fine collection of lead soldiers, the old beautifully hand-painted kind, to which I was inordinately attached. I had Scots Guards, Beefeaters, British Grenadiers, French Foreign Legionnaires with their bayoneted rifles and peculiar red kepis, and finally the Horse Guards with their shiny breastplates and magnificent chargers. I used to line them up in battle formation every other day on the living-room rug and engage in fierce battles, until one day when I was twelve I put them quietly away for the last time. In my last year of grade school, when I had just turned thirteen, my sister Larcy and I discovered roller-skating. There was a huge indoor rink under the Winnipeg Auditorium and on Saturdays you could skate all afternoon for fifteen cents. Though the ceiling was low it had a fine hardwood surface. There was an odd smell of dust and wool and human bodies, but the romance of the music, the roar of the skates, and the swirling motion had an almost hypnotic effect. I was just beginning to become interested in girls, and I couldn’t wait for Saturday to come round again so that I could go with my sister and some friends and perhaps summon up enough courage to ask one of the girls to skate a few clockwise circles. One of the greatest pleasures I had all through my growing years was playing golf. I started early, around five, and though my coaching was sporadic I soon developed a passion for the game. Our whole family was addicted, especially my father and older brother Buzz. All of us men were left-handers, but being the youngest I shifted to right when the left-handed clubs ran out and I took over my mother’s, who played only to go along with the others. These clubs had wooden shafts, of course, and my first

221 Yale

19

steel shaft was a 4 iron, which I used for every shot except at the tee and green. I loved that club and I could do almost anything with it. My next club was a spoon, a three wood, handy for both driving and fairway shots. My father and Uncle Arthur Grassby were two of the founders of a small course at Sandy Hook on Lake Winnipeg where we all had cottages. The cost for a family membership in the thirties was fifteen dollars per season. As far as I can remember, apart from the pro, Pete the groundskeeper was the only employee; he cut the tiny greens twice a week and the fairways only when they needed cutting, which wasn’t often in the dry summer. The course had been an old farm but it was cunningly laid out, nine holes, par 35. Several of the greens were not grass but sand, and you smoothed your divot, footprints, and putter line by dragging an oiled mat away from the hole. Any of the pros that I remember were Scots, small and large, but they all knew and loved the game. Their stipend at the Sandy Hook Club for two and a half months was $125, which I suppose was more than they would have made in Depression Scotland. For three of the next six years, until I was twelve, I didn’t play much golf as the family spent the summer with our cousins in California, or in Victoria, B. C. along the shore in a rambling old house at 444 Transit Road. But we three brothers, and my sisters too, did get a chance to play in three of those summers at Banff, Alberta. The Banff Springs course we played several times a week without charge, thanks to my father being an official with the cpr. In 1938 with the war on the horizon mother and Dad bought a cottage on Lake Winnipeg, and from then until 1947 I played the Sandy Hook Course often. To an addict like myself, the skill required in golf, the competition, the socializing, the exercise, the fresh air, the surroundings can’t be surpassed. Through the years, through thick and thin, good weather and bad, I have always looked forward to every game I played. Mother always had a great desire to travel. She had an immense curiosity to see and experience new things and people. For their honeymoon father and mother sailed to the Orient. This was in 1915, when the First World War was raging in Europe. Japan was

20

The Greater Glory

on the Allied side in that war, but there were German colonies in the Pacific and some submarines lurking about. They went to the Philippines, Japan, and China, and mother talked about her travels for the next thirty years with us children, especially the experience of being pulled in a rickshaw and the pungent odors of the paddy fields. One of her favourite sojourns was California. Before she was married her family had spent part of the winters there in the early 1900s, taking the route by train from Winnipeg to Minneapolis to Kansas City and so on to Los Angeles. Then in the twenties her two sisters and their families had moved there permanently. When the children came, she would scoop us up and head southwest by the same route and even enroll us in schools down there. My father would come part way and bid us a sad goodbye for a couple of months; it must have been very hard on him. In the thirties, as we all got older, we would go to California in the summer, often by car in our new Olds, mother and we five, spending ten days to get there. In the back seat we three kids, eight, ten, and twelve, would play all kinds of games to while away the time, “I spy with my little eye,” “I pack my trunk for China” or naming the fortyeight states – as they were then – along with their capitals. I remember stopping at Las Vegas for lunch in 1937. It was just a village then, and unconscionably hot in early June. After lunch we bought ice-cream cones and by the time we reached the car they had dripped down over our hands. Adventurously but rather foolishly we proceeded across the desert towards California with no air conditioning, of course, our feet out the windows. Buzz was just seventeen, but he was an excellent driver and Mom gave him the wheel for at least half of the time. We spent the night at Bakersfield and heard on the morning news that three people had died of heatstroke the previous day. My Aunt Dick and Uncle Lou lived in San Fernando Valley, at that time being newly developed. He was a house and building contractor and by the mid-thirties business was slowly picking up. He had a seven-passenger car with jiffy seats over which Auntie would place a leaf from the dining-room table, and like the old circus act all twelve of us would miraculously pile into the one car

221 Yale

21

and drive off to the ocean at Santa Monica. Mother and Aunt Dick would prepare huge lunches, always including my favourite – stuffed hard-boiled eggs. We would body-ride the waves all day and Mom would try to scare us by wrapping herself up in kelp. Once at Balboa, where we spent a few weeks, I ventured out into the bay in a rowboat by myself. Suddenly the tide changed and began to drag my little boat out to the open ocean. I struggled with all my might to row towards shore but I couldn’t make it. Finally, with a desperate tug on the oars I managed to pull in towards the rock breakwater where the tide was pulling less. I almost crashed into the rocks but eventually was able to get back. I dreamt about it for years afterwards. Another time, Que and I, who were fairly good swimmers by this time, saved our younger cousin Gerry from drowning. We were having fun in a tidal creek near the sea when the tide suddenly came in with a rush and Gerry began to flounder. We were laughing just as the waves hit us and even we began to be in trouble, but we could see that Gerry was taking in water and beginning to gasp. Finally, Que and I grabbed him and hauled him to the bank, all of us choking and sputtering. Mother began talking about our next summer’s travels right after the Christmas holidays. About March she would get out the two old trunks, one an old steamer that she had used on her trip to the Orient, and start packing, neatly folding and putting away everything needed for five kids and herself for a whole summer. After California our next favourite spot was Banff, Alberta. My father was able to secure wonderful accommodations for us in a spacious log cabin near the hotel for a minimum charge. Everything was provided for by the hotel – beds, blankets, kitchen-ware – everything except food. We took the train across the Prairies, starting in the early morning, speeding at seventy miles an hour across endless waving wheat fields, stopping for coal and water at the various divisional points with wonderful names like Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat. We had a drawing room for us seven, Mom and Dad in the lower bunk, three boys in the upper, my two sisters on the settee, and the maid outside in the railway car in a bunk of her own. Since it was the mid-thirties, to save money for the big evening meal in the diner that night, we all had sandwiches

22

The Greater Glory

in the privacy of the drawing room, and then mother threw the scraps out of the window to hide the evidence from the porter who was hovering nearby. The evening meal was delicious, served by lurching waiters carrying huge trays down the narrow aisle, but the great treat was the rolled-oats porridge at breakfast for which the cooks surely had a special formula. Dad always left a nice tip that must have been considerable, given the eight of us at two tables. Even before Calgary from the train windows you could see the gigantic forms of the Rockies, and as we got closer they became overpowering. We got off at Banff station in the clear, fine mountain air and were hustled into a huge open-air taxi, the eight of us wrapped in red Hudson Bay blankets. The owner, Jim Brewster, a friend of my father, with his white Stetson hat and big smile, was there and made sure that all of us were on board and comfortable. As we sped towards the hotel and our cabin, the scent of the spruce in that sharp air was intoxicating and to this day I can still recall that scent. We ate our first meal at the Banff Springs Hotel and then on to our cabin perched on the side of Sulphur Mountain. Though we slept and ate most of our meals at our chalet, full access to all the facilities of the Hotel was given us at practically no cost, the two pools, fresh and sulphur, riding, the wonderful golf course. We got to know everyone in the hotel, not only some of the young guests, mostly American, but also the staff, many of whom were university students. We knew every nook and cranny of the hotel, including the parapets at the very top. Mr Cooper, the chief lifeguard, taught us swimming and diving, and we used to visit him in his quarters in the nicer staff building down below that was reserved for more senior members. Que, Larcy, and I liked the garbageman best because he would bring us to the dump to see the bears anytime we wanted. There would always be at least half a dozen black and brown bears munching away on the remains of the rich hotel fare. My father would spend his holidays with us and we were always sorry when he had to return to Winnipeg. He played golf with us and was even able to secure an old car for us to make our forays outside of Banff. Once when the president of the cpr, Sir Edward Beatty, my Dad’s boss and friend, was on an inspection tour of his empire, we five children

221 Yale

23

were summoned to appear before him and submitted to his close questioning about our young lives and prospects for the future. All of us played a lot of golf on that lovely mountain course. My sisters became quite proficient too as they both had natural swings, but Buzz became the best and remained so until his last days. Que and I wouldn’t play eighteen holes but would cut over to the fifteenth and miss the water holes and watch for the huge osprey nest on the way in. Que and I, and often Larcy, climbed Sulphur Mountain at least once a week. As our cottage was on the lower reaches we simply headed out the door and began the ascent, armed with a sandwich and apple. Eschewing the gradual, winding paths we used to head straight up and make it in a few hours. It was always very windy on the summit and a bit nerve-wracking crossing the col, which we did on hands and knees. We would then rush and slide straight down, criss-crossing path after path until we reached our chalet, ready for supper and trying to beat the time of our last descent. We went up Mounts Rundle and even Edith too, the latter foolishly without ropes. Mom was waiting in the car at the foot when we came down, very relieved to see us safe and sound. The views on the summits were breathtaking, even for ten and twelve year olds, especially my first view on one of the climbs of Mount Assiniboine. I experienced real fear for the first time, and it never abated with the next mountain. Mother would organize picnics several times a week to the many attractive spots near Banff; we would jump into the ancient Essex and head off to Lake Louise, Emerald Lake, Lake Minnewonka – a favourite especially for its mountain sheep – Johnson’s Canyon, Yoho Falls, even Golden. There weren’t many tourists then and fewer cars, and the side roads were mostly gravel, narrow and precipitous. We never had to resort to the switchbacks, but we were happy that they were behind us as a back-up, especially when the Essex groaned and slowed down to a crawl in low gear. We got to know the park game warden well. He would tether his horse at the gate a stone’s throw from our cabin, and talk to us by the hour. For some reason he wasn’t allowed to go beyond the park gate, but mother would bring him coffee and cookies and

24

The Greater Glory

hand them over the fence. Once he invited us all for lunch at his cabin, at least ten miles down the Spray River. All eight of us, including Mom, Dad, and the maid, made the long journey by the gravel road inside the park. He had only one horse, and we would all take turns, two at a time, riding on the warden’s mare, and even mother, who was a good rider, and Dad got up and rode for a while. The warden had a beautiful little cabin right on the bank of the river, and not another human except us for at least ten miles in any direction. He held Larcy and me over the Spray River to catch fish in a net as they jumped over the rocks, and then we had a lovely fish lunch with chocolate milk to drink. Although we might have complained about the long tramp back, still accompanied by the warden, I envied him as he turned his horse round for the long ride back to his little cabin. I always felt a great thrill at the rushing water of the mountain rivers and falls. Often I would stand on the main bridge in Banff crossing the Bow River and watch with fascination the deep green water of the river as it began to pick up speed and head for the Bow Falls not far downstream. The falls themselves were breathtaking, and even a little frightening, as the river narrowed and then plunged down the gorge. I felt the same thrill at the drop of water at Johnson’s Canyon and Yoho Falls. The clear water of the Spray River was gentler just below the first tee of the Banff Springs Course as it jumped and bounced over the rocks, but it soon changed colour and speed as it was engulfed by the rushing green of the Bow just below the falls. One of the highlights of our summers in Banff was what was known as “Indian Days.” For ten days or so the Stoney Indians from Morley near Calgary would make the trek by horse and wagon to Banff and pitch their tepees in a spacious field near the town. They came to put on a display mainly for the guests of the Banff Springs Hotel, but there were also some other tourists not staying at the hotel who came in from Calgary and elsewhere. I don’t know who paid the Stoney Tribe for their activities, probably the cpr, but the Aboriginals – though they were not so known then – seemed eager to come in those deep days of the Depression when they were living desperate lives, being paid a pittance by the

221 Yale

25

federal government. A contest to see how fast they could pitch their tepees was one of the events, but I mainly recall the racing of their ponies. These ponies were small, fast and exciting to watch; I rode many of them both then and later, as well as other ponies from the paddocks near the hotel. At times they could get away from you, and many times, being only ten years old, I couldn’t hold them as they took off at full gallop. I used to hold on to the pommel for dear life until they tired and slowed down. All the Stoneys seemed to be there, young and old. I remember an old man wrapped in a tattered Hudson Bay Company pointblanket coat squatting near his tepee and drinking his tea through a lump of sugar held between his teeth. Supper was a kind of feast, and I recall the men cutting up carcasses of beef with uncanny accuracy. At night they would put on dazzling displays of dancing and chanting, war dances, rain dances, etc. For a dollar you could borrow one of their headdresses and have your picture taken. Some may now question the appropriateness of these displays, but they took place seventy years ago when attitudes were less understanding but not ungenerous. As the Depression eased, the news in Europe worsened. 1937 was our last summer trip of any distance, and then Mom and Dad decided to buy a summer home closer to Winnipeg. They settled on a fine, large cottage on Lake Winnipeg, at Beachside, a few miles north of Winnipeg Beach. It had seven bedrooms and we turned the old tennis court into grass and gardens although we still called it the Tennis Court. The cost of this spacious lakefront property in 1938 was $1,200 and my brothers and I mowed the lawns, tended the gardens, and cut wood, mostly soft poplar, for the kitchen stove and in cooler weather for the little tin stove in the front room. It was secluded and quiet, and even quieter in the fall when Mom, Larcy, and I would come up on Friday nights on the 5:20 train from the city. We had to walk about a mile from the tiny station, really only a cinder platform, to our cottage. I had to lug our old battered black suitcase that held a few supplies for our supper along the wooden sidewalk towards the lake. In late fall it was already dark and we fell silent as we passed an old graveyard along the way. We were glad to get in and light the kitchen and

26

The Greater Glory

front room stoves, which would almost instantly send off waves of heat from the dry poplar. One particularly dry spring Que and I were burning leaves on the shore of the lake. Suddenly a huge wind came up and in seconds the flames had roared a half-mile down the shore, which was covered with high dry grass. The fire was soon out of control and began to creep up the bank and towards the cottages, including our own. Mother, who was alone with us two, told Que, then only fourteen, to jump into the car and get help from the nearby village. He and I roared to town at sixty miles an hour to the small police station. The officer-in-charge, a Mr Quincey, formerly of the rcmp, soon rounded up four men of the volunteer fire department, got into the front seat with my fourteen-year old brother at the wheel and ordered Que to “drive like hell” the two and a half miles. In the back seat I was crammed in with the four-man volunteer fire department, armed with gunny sacks. Is that all they’re bringing? I wondered, but it was enough. Working like demons with their gunny sacks soaked with lake water, they soon brought the fire under control, to the relief of us all, especially mother, who finally got up off her knees and now prayed in thanksgiving. Although I suppose that we children were somewhat spoiled by the distant summer sojourns we were also very grateful for them, and we soon adjusted to the more proximate location of Lake Winnipeg, coming to love our house and property there. The swimming was good, off the long wooden dock over the rocks a block away, and there were fine tennis courts nearby. Best of all was the tiny nine-hole golf course at Sandy Hook where all of us had learned to play six years earlier. Que and I kept the grounds neat and carefully clipped, and every two years we painted the house white and the trim a deep French blue. We drove to church faithfully every Sunday and heard the sermon and announcements in Polish. The congregational singing was pretty horrific, although the vigour and piety were strong. I recall looking far out onto the lake and wondering what would happen to the family, especially to Buzz who was just twenty, when it was announced in September 1939 that war had been declared by Canada. I was only thirteen but the war in Poland and the involvement of France, Britain, and now Canada didn’t seem so far away.

2 The Nuns

much of my early life from six to fourteen revolved around Saint Ignatius School, run by a fine group of Nuns, the Sisters of Jesus and Mary. They had their headquarters in Montreal, where their young aspirants were trained in spirituality and the elements of teaching and then posted to schools in Canada or to Lesothto in southern Africa – Basutoland as it was known then. They were, by and large, friendly and kind to their young charges, but always strict, and if school discipline was abused, punishment was swift and sure, though not severe. In grade five I was once caught talking to the boy next to me by the principal, Sister Immaculate, who had an unusually florid complexion, as she happened to pass by the open door of the classroom. She summoned me out to the hall, drew a stiff strap from her voluminous skirts, whacked me once on each hand, and then returned me to my seat with the whole class agog. For the most part the nuns had odd religious names, assigned to them when they pronounced their vows after their novitiate training as if to efface their previous identities and even gender. As though to put their feminine past behind them, many were saddled with names like Theodore of Rome, Aloysius Gonzaga, Hermann, even William Henry. Sister Theodore of Rome, who taught my older sister English in their St Mary’s affiliate of the University of Manitoba, was a sophisticated person, well educated, who seemed to carry her appellation with aplomb. Sister Gonzaga supervised or rather controlled the altar boys. Sister Hermann appropriately taught college German. Sister William Henry was

28

The Greater Glory

the principal of our elementary school for many years, too many, some of us thought, and though petite and quite feminine-looking she lived up to her strong masculine name and was very tough and even stern. I suppose she had to be, overseeing over 300 children from grades one to eight, with forty students per class. The strength of these nuns’ teaching was the three Rs. They were especially proficient in elementary English, reading, spelling, and grammar. I can still see strings of arrows on the blackboard connecting the various types of subordinate clauses to their sources in the main clause. In arithmetic we “sing-songed” the multiplication tables day after day, until in time we could do them backwards or forwards, awake or asleep. We had spelling every day too, and spelling bees every week with the class up at the front divided into two. The words gradually got harder, and then there would be only one or two of the class left on each side, as those who had muffed a word trailed to their seats. The competition was keen but not frantic as the nuns knew exactly when to stop. You could see that they were enjoying the bees as much as the class. I loved every minute of them. Small prizes were awarded, a holy picture, a little statue of the Virgin Mary, one of which I treasured for years. There was daily reading aloud, standing at our desks, with “Sister” helping and encouraging. No laughing at glaring blunders. All the nuns knew French, some being francophones, but the Manitoba curriculum at that time called for French to start only in grade seven, and then only grammar and syntax. A few nuns tried to help us to read and say a few sentences in French, but there was little time or tolerance for that in the provincial system. Many French teachers in the public schools could not speak or understand a word of French. We had catechism every morning, first thing. It was the old, standard penny catechism, and we were called upon to recite by heart the few passages learned for “homework” the night before, the ten commandments, the seven sacraments, etc. My father always heard my rote memory task for the next day and questioned me on my performance the following night. The nuns also supervised the altar boys, training them meticulously for serving both at High (singing, incense, etc.) and Low

The Nuns

29

(simple) Masses. Then, of course, everything was in Latin, and though most sisters knew little Latin, they knew enough to teach us the responses with the pronunciation (Italian or ecclesiastical) perfect. Every action and gesture had to be learned scrupulously, and somehow none of the boys, as far as I remember, seemed to mind. In fact, all of us boys took it as a rather special privilege to serve Mass, and looked forward to assisting or “serving,” even though later it wasn’t easy getting up at six-thirty on a winter morning to be on hand for seven on an empty stomach. The High Mass on Christmas Eve was very special. We had to be there in the sanctuary boys’ room for eleven-thirty. Several extra nuns were already there, either conscripted by Sister Principal or voluntarily, to help out, and they had arranged the cassocks – red for Christmas, Easter, and other special occasions, otherwise black – all newly dry-cleaned, on racks in descending order of size. You had to pick out your own size soutane, which was supposed to go down to your ankles. Boys who were late or careless would find one that went only to the knees. A nun would then rush over and have us switch with shorter boys whose cassocks might be dangling down to their shoe tops. Everything had to be perfect. The surplices were starched and neatly arranged according to size on long tables, each one fastidiously pleated and tied with a bow to retain the pleat. As twelve o’clock approached, the nuns, headed by Sister Gonzaga, whom everyone knew as Gozzy, called for silence with their wooden clappers and began to arrange the 150 boys in a double line according to their height. The line stretched the whole length of the basement, whose ceiling reached at least sixty feet, being the original site of the first church. Then began the long climb up a twisting staircase to the upper church with Gozzy watching every boy and every move from the first landing. “Those who have to blow their noses, do so now,” I heard her command, “and from now on, there will be no looking at the contents of your handkerchiefs.” Everything had to be correct. We entered the nave of the church by the side door, turned a sharp right past St Joseph’s altar and then filed into the beautiful ambulatory of carved and polished wood that enclosed the sanctuary.

30

The Greater Glory

Tiny vigil lights of red, green, and white flickered from a ledge on top of the ambulatory. The line then disappeared behind the main altar and then the double line broke into two and stopped before the entry curtains. A nun was there to give the signal to two taller boys stationed by each curtain ready to pull the cord, and the two files, led by the shortest boys, appeared and began to walk slowly into the sanctuary, joined in the centre, faced towards the main altar, genuflected together, then turned and proceeded towards their stalls, the smallest ones on benches inside the communion rail, the older boys into stalls facing one another. Every eye in the church was fastened on these slowly advancing red and white figures, crimson cassocks and snow-white surplices, brushed and burnished within an inch of their lives. The parents were mainly in the front pews, having obtained tickets well beforehand – no charge – and feasting on every movement and gesture of their little boys. The nave of the church was packed, the chandeliers overhead were turned down to accent the tiny red lights at the entrances that were lit only once a year, and the choir-master, Maurice Gelley, sang “O Holy Night” on the stair of the choir loft. Soon the air was heavy with incense as the High Mass progressed and the younger boys began to drowse. A few fell from their benches and parents rushed up over the communion rail to gather them up and carry them to the vestibule. The three officiating priests in their heavy gold vestments began to perspire, the older boys to be distracted with thoughts of the waiting Christmas presents. The sermon was blessedly brief, always delivered by the pastor, and when the Mass finished at half-past one, the exhilaration was past and fatigue had set in. Large, solitary, uncovered bulbs hanging down by a single wire illuminated the classrooms of the old school, but the ceilings were high and the windows long. The forty desks were highly polished and woe to any boy or girl who made a mark or spilt ink. We used straight pens, of course, dipped into the inkwells. I never learned to write well, perhaps because I had been forcibly changed from left to right hand in public school. The boys and girls were about equally divided, and many had either a brother or sister in our

The Nuns

31

class. They didn’t seem to talk to each other more than to anyone else. The boys were mostly bigger and taller, although not always older, but why they had fallen back in school was never talked about. Each one’s standing on the monthly report cards was read out in class and all had to come up to the teacher’s desk to receive their beautifully inscribed card, which was to be taken home, signed, and commented on by the parents; ours watched the progress of each of us children carefully and lovingly. On very cold or rainy days we were allowed to bring our lunches and, since there was no cafeteria, we were allowed to talk and eat right in the classroom. We always wanted to get Sister Ambrose to split our apples with her bare hands. Once a month was confession day for the whole school in preparation for Mass and Communion on the “First Friday.” “Sister” prepared us beforehand in the classroom. We put our heads down on the desks and closed our eyes as, using the Penny Catechism she went through the Decalogue. The first five were easy enough, swearing, missing Mass, disobeying parents, fighting, but then came the sixth and ninth. She wouldn’t elaborate, and all she would say was, “Were there any irregular motions of the flesh?” I had no idea what that question meant except that it had something to do with down there and it was somehow bad. I wondered a lot about it and thought it very mysterious, perhaps the little thing moving or jumping up and down, how I didn’t know. In any case “Sister” did not dwell on it and moved on to the seventh and eighth. It wasn’t until I was thirteen that I came to know what those mysterious circumlocutions meant. After this the whole class trooped over to the beautiful yellowlimestone church and lined up to go to confession. There were at least three boxes going. Most of the boys I knew didn’t seem to mind; I’m not sure about the girls although some of them told me later they hated the dark stuffy cubicles and the whispering of the priest’s absolution. One girl in our class had gone into the church on her own and had lit every vigil light she could find. Whether she thought that a matter for confession I never knew, but the nuns were very angry with her as they had to clean out the wax and refill at least a hundred glass vigils. I couldn’t think of much

32

The Greater Glory

to say. At home, lying was unthinkable and so were anger and meanness. That left fighting. I didn’t do much fighting but I did do a lot of wrestling and pushing but I never felt that that was wrong. The priests were generally kind but cryptic as the lines were long: 320 children’s confessions in one day with the same round of peccadilloes would weary a saint. Before puberty I was of average height for my age but I was strong and loved a bit of roughhouse. At recess and noon we used to play “Keep the Hill” or “King of the Castle” on the snow banks of the school rink. I loved the pushing and wrestling and always seemed to get to the top of the hill, only to be hurled down again by a dozen arms. We also played a running game we called “Pompom-pull-away” in which as many as forty or fifty boys could participate. It was a game that required no particular skill except running. One boy would be “it” and stand in the middle with the players divided at each end of the field. The purpose was to tag on the back anyone running to the other end, and when one was tagged he joined the other fellow in the centre and then they tried to tag two others and so on until all were tagged, and then it began again. There were always arguments about whether one was tagged or not, and it had to be on the back, but it was great fun and entailed a lot of wild running back and forth. At times even these simple games became somewhat rough. Occasionally, “Pomp,” for short, deteriorated into grabbing smaller boys and swinging them around, flat out at the end of the wrist. One of the great devotees of this was my friend and classmate Joe Gosselin, one of the many Metis we had in the school. In grade three Joe was thirteen, having started school only the year before, and I was nine. After twirling me around a few times without my showing any fear, we became fast friends. He was tough and strong and already very muscular and most of the boys, even the older ones, stayed clear of him, but I liked him. Underneath the rough exterior he was quite gentle and although he spoke little and in half-sentences he began to tell me about his life. He would come over to our house and sit on the coping of the front steps and talk by the hour. He turned out to be quite a raconteur.

The Nuns

33

Joe lived in what everybody then called Rooster Town, beyond Waugh’s grocery store on what was then open prairie, rough grass punctuated by a few willows and scrub oaks. There was also Turkey Town a little farther east. These Metis spoke French and were separate from the Scottish Metis who lived north of Winnipeg. They were desperately poor in those days and most lived in tar paper shacks. Joe was bow-legged, a victim of rickets, like his three sisters; you could drive a barrel through his short legs. One day he spotted a pair of boxing gloves in our children’s room that my older brother and I used to spar with. Joe tried them on and challenged Buzz to a few rounds. Buzz was sixteen then and an excellent boxer, later winning the inter-services bantam-weight title. Though Joe was shorter, both were about the same weight, and what began as friendly shadowboxing soon turned into a real slug fest. After several rough rounds Joe and Buzz agreed to call it a draw and shook hands. Next year Joe came back to visit, but only once, and he then disappeared, his short education career and his friendship with me over, but perhaps not his fighting career. Of course I played hockey at the school and on outdoor rinks near home. The public rinks were flooded by the fire department and after a coating of four or five inches of water the surfaces were soon solid and as smooth as glass. At St Ignatius we had a fine rink with high boards. Nearby was the warm-up shack, a long narrow green structure with a stove-pipe belching smoke. It was a godsend. With a pot-belly stove in the centre and hard wooden benches along the walls, it was a haven to escape from the forty-below temperature outside. We would freeze our toes and face in about ten minutes, then dash in and, to get the circulation back, kneel on the benches and rub snow onto our faces. The grizzled man in charge of the rink and shack would stoke up the stove and then happily eject a stream of tobacco juice to sizzle on the stove. Even after years of shinny with no pads I never became adept at stickhandling, though I was a fair skater. On the way home, often in the dark with the temperature at forty below Fahrenheit, I could hear in the distance the crinkle of the wheels of the delivery wagons on the hard-packed snow and the moan of the train whistles miles away.

34

The Greater Glory

On this carefree scene there fell a blanket, a heavy and smothering blanket. It didn’t fall completely on me but it did directly on scores of my schoolmates, most of them one or two years older. I was ten at the time, and they eleven or twelve. The pastor of our church was a pedophile, and in those days pedophiles got away undetected, unscathed, unpunished. All the boys above grade three in the school knew about him and every one wondered and feared who would be next but of course no one ever thought of reporting him, certainly not to our parents nor to the police. No eleven-year old boy in the 1930s knew that pedophilia was a criminal offence. In any case, if it were reported, who would believe you, especially against the word of an authority figure trusted and revered by the community? Besides, there was the shame, guilt, and embarrassment. And so it went on. His next victims, usually the more handsome ones, would be summoned out of class to go deep down into the church hall in a room at the back. Being perhaps too young I was not summoned, but my experience was frightening enough, although more open and so safer. This man, being the pastor, often said the last Mass during the week at eight a.m. All of us altar boys wanted to avoid this Mass if we knew the pastor was saying it, but the nuns would assign us and we obviously couldn’t tell them what we feared, nor were we ever sure who would say the Mass. We had to put on our cassocks and surplices in the vestibule outside the sacristy, and when we came in, sometimes the pastor was there, already vesting for Mass. There were usually two of us boys, and that was some comfort. Besides, at any time a parishioner could come in. Then, one day after Mass the pastor dismissed the other boy, claiming he had something to say to me. As soon as the sacristy door closed, still in his vestments, he came over to me, grabbed me, and began pressing himself against me and slobbering wet kisses on my lips. I could smell the sacred wine on his breath. I tried to wriggle free, but he was a burly man, as strong as Sampson. He squeezed harder and covered my lips with more dripping kisses, adding silly baby talk about love and loneliness. As I twisted in his iron embrace, I wondered if I could ever get free. He must have sensed my fear, disgust, and even hatred because I was able

The Nuns

35

to lurch away. He dismissed me and I threw off my cassock and went head down off to my classroom. The damage had been done, not as harmful as it might have been, but the episode had happened in a holy place after what we all thought was the most sacred activity of our lives, the Mass, setting up in my young mind an unholy and unnatural link between sex and religion that was hard to discern and only later to be broken. This happened two or three times over the year. I felt ashamed, guilty, but most of all confused. I should have told my parents, but what would I tell them? They would have believed me, and my father would have been furious, marched directly over to the parish rectory, and even gone to the archbishop, whom he knew well, but both he and mother never had any reason to suspect that anything was amiss. Looking back with clearer vision I see that I made a terrible mistake in not telling my parents, but at that time, what young boy or girl would report such a thing? I was so confused and ashamed that I wouldn’t have known what to say or how to approach the matter, especially since I was not completely compromised. Yet to this day I reproach myself for not coming forward with what I knew. This child-abuser was the pastor of the largest parish in the city and was well known as a popular preacher and capable administrator, but he had already abused more than forty boys. To add to the almost diabolical confusion, he would harangue the older boys in their classrooms, having dismissed the girls, on the dire effects of masturbation, fabricating lurid stories about young men being tied to their beds in insane asylums and thus further frightening and confusing the very boys he had abused, some that very day. Some of us feared for the following year when we would be one year older and more attractive to him. Then suddenly he was moved, perhaps exposed by some more courageous or desperate boy or boys, sent away to Montreal to a boys high school, a stratagem perpetrated by authorities down to this day, but the emotional debris was already strewn in our schoolyard. I didn’t reveal my part in this experience to anyone until I was in my late twenties, never to my family. Even this late in life the mark is still on me, but not as deep as it surely was on the forty or more unluckier ones trapped in that pit.

36

The Greater Glory

Like most youngsters, once this unfortunate episode was past I put it not out of mind but at the back of it. I was still only ten, and at that age if most of your life is happy and normal you generally focus on the present and the more cheerful things in life. I also knew that the other priests stationed in the parish and a few others that I had encountered were normal, kind men dedicated to their calling. But the miasma was not dissipated and kept coming back when the older boys who had been abused began to form little groups and started to solicit us younger boys in the school to join them in little “parties.” Once, during the summer at Lake Winnipeg when I was about thirteen, I was swimming in what was called the Channel. I had to go to the bathroom so I got out of the water and went away to where some willows grew and where I found privacy. Or so I thought. Just behind the willows, stretched out on the sand, were half a dozen boys my age and in the centre, an older boy whom I knew had been abused by that priest. They were all naked, in the midst of masturbating, and the older boy turned towards me, called out my name, and invited me to join them. Ashamed, I walked away. At other times, I was asked several times and received many phone calls to come over to the houses of those who had been abused. I knew what they wanted and although it was rather flattering to be invited by older boys, I always said I was busy and never went. What started with one man became an ever-widening circle of abuse. The nuns who taught us knew nothing of the abuse, although the principal was strong and wise enough to have handled it. The nuns were wholly given to their work, teaching all subjects in their class the entire day, watching over the school yard even in the bitterest weather, walking two miles back to their convent after the school yard cleared, and receiving and turning in to their superiors their hefty salaries of $8 a month for their labour. And so eventually I passed on to grade eight, the final year at St Ignatius. Our teacher was Sister Catherine Cecilia, an extraordinary woman, talented, sane, organized. She wrote with both hands on the board at the same time and in spare periods taught us the rudiments of Latin to get us ready for high school. No teacher could have prepared us more assiduously for the following

The Nuns

37

year. In the final months most of her efforts were given to preparing a few of us for the scholarship exams in the late spring, boys for St Paul’s, girls for St Mary’s. Of the two who won scholarships for the fourteen Catholic parochial schools participating, both were her students, I for the boys and Irene Messner for the girls.

3 Scruples

i was excited about starting high school. The nuns had done their work; they had prepared both the girls and boys well for the next step. I was very grateful for what they had done but was glad to go forward. St Paul’s College was located in downtown Winnipeg, one block north of the Hudson’s Bay Company store, at the corner of Ellice and Vaughan. I had to leave home about 8:10 for the nine o’clock class. Later I would take my old bike and ride like the wind, weaving through morning traffic, though there wasn’t that much in 1940. I used to try to outrace the streetcars and ran into their back ends more than once. Occasionally I would hold onto the outside handle of the rear door for a free pull, but that was tricky in slippery weather. The St Paul’s campus was spacious for a downtown site. The high school, in a separate building from the college, was a quite attractive brick structure in Georgian style, only five years old at the time. It was called Paul Shea Hall, named after the son of a local brewer, who had attended Fordham University in New York and died young. The university building adjoining looked like a Scottish castle and had been built in the 1880s to house the Presbyterian College, which had sold it to the Jesuits in the early thirties. What struck me about the campus, though, was the gigantic – to me – playing field on the east side stretching the whole block, but totally devoid of any grass except a little under a few stubby Manitoba maples on the outer edge. It was pure mud, dry and

Scruples

39

crinkly, but soon to become the slithery Manitoba gumbo after the first rain. All of us spent hundreds of hours on that gridiron. On the west side of the Paul Shea Hall was a kind of assembly area of hard-packed cinders where we waited for the 8:50 bell in kindly weather. We then trooped in to our assigned rooms: I was to be in 9A. There were three grade levels, 9, 10, and 11, with A and B in each. All the Catholic parochial schools in the city taught the first eight grades, then it was on to private Catholic high schools for those who could afford the $10 a month, a serious sum in those days when the government gave no subsidies to private schools. The teachers were mostly Jesuits, either priests or what were known as scholastics, young men not yet ordained but having been in the Jesuit Order at least seven years. After completing their novitiate of two years and studying the classics and philosophy for five years, these latter took a kind of break and were sent to the various Jesuit colleges across Canada for a three-year stint of teaching and helping out. Often in the smaller colleges, if they were numerous enough, they almost took over from the older priests, who were glad to be relieved of some of their duties. Since they were younger, usually in their mid-twenties, they seemed closer to the boys and, with a few exceptions, friendly and helpful. One who was not had flaming red hair and a temper to match. He was forever reprimanding us with sarcastic remarks and trying to catch us out in some trivial misdemeanor. Worse, he seemed to suspect that we were plotting some grand conspiracy either against him or, absurdly, against the school, and he would relay his suspicions to the assistant principal, who must have turned them aside because we were never summoned to his office. My first day in class was supervised by the class teacher, Father Anthony Deslauriers, a middle-aged Jesuit dressed in a black cassock and Roman collar. He had an almost cherubic, child-like face and a gentle but clear voice. I immediately felt at home, and I think that the rest of the boys, almost forty, half of whom I had known for eight years at St Ignatius, felt the same way. He preserved wonderful discipline with the class without appearing to try. He had an indefinable presence, gentle on the outside, strong

40

The Greater Glory

and firm beneath, and we were never tempted to test him. I think that during the whole year he got angry just once. Fr Deslauriers taught us Latin, English, and religion. He knew his Latin cold, as did all the Jesuits, at least the grammar. With our memories like blotters, he taught us useful tags and gimmicks that I can recall sixty years later, like the mnemonic for the prepositions that govern the ablative case, or the verbs that govern the dative case. Religion class, which we had twice a week, unlike the daily rote periods with the nuns, he made interesting with stories and experiences, many of which were drawn from his own life. Thus he added a very personal touch, even an intimate one, which the nuns had never done. He was competent too in English grammar and composition. Every weekend we had to write a composition, some of which we read aloud to the class on Monday morning. All were later carefully corrected with acute comments and mistakes red-penciled. This exercise must have taken at least three hours to perform, but the process of theme writing was extremely valuable in developing the personal and fluid writing style for which the English tutor system is so famous. It is a mark too of the graduates of Jesuit high schools that most can write an intelligible and correct English sentence. Our class master was less successful in his teaching of English Literature. This was true also of most Jesuits I knew who taught English literature in high school, though not of the university professors who, even in the old days, had at least master’s degrees. Generally, they had been exposed only to a limited number of the great works of English prose and poetry in their early seminary training and lacked an appreciation and sensitivity that they might have imparted to their students. Their approach was rather analytical and mechanical. Although others in my class and myself were in the habit of scoring in the nineties in English literature, later in our graduating year when we had to take provincial examinations, we plunged to the sixties. But what was memorable and exceptional was the insistence of a handsome, almost charismatic Jesuit in grade ten on our daily memorizing of eight lines of English poetry, mostly the Romantics. Even at the time I didn’t find it burdensome, though if you made a mistake in recitation

Scruples

41

you had to write out the passage several times. The beautiful rhythms and imagery of so many of those passages are still implanted in my memory and even now often give me much pleasure. Later in university I memorized hundreds of the great passages on my own. Achievement, competition, striving for excellence both in class and in sports were ingrained in the Jesuit system. Each month at Assembly the dean read out the marks of the entire school and those who stood first, second, and third in each class were called up to receive little cards of different colours with the boy’s name inscribed, and also to receive a few words of congratulation. It was unnerving to walk up with the whole faculty and student body staring, but it must have been worse for those who never went up to the stage at all. The competitive spirit was even stronger in sports but I was never aware of anyone being envious of another. Perhaps I was naïve but I felt that that the good athletes and, less so, the academic achievers were respected and held in a kind of awe, but not envied. Although I was small and thin for fourteen I tried and loved all the sports that were offered. There was a fine sports program at St Paul’s, as in all Jesuit schools, as well as excellent coaching, and everyone was encouraged, though not forced, to participate. The better players were urged to join the extra-mural teams, but there was a place for everyone in the inter-class leagues. In grade nine I played on the extra-mural bantam hockey and basketball teams. I liked hockey very much but was never very proficient, a fair skater but I could not handle the puck well. Games and practices were all on outdoor rinks, and we often froze our toes and faces. We had a smart and enthusiastic coach, but he swore like a trooper, and I heard epithets, especially when we were losing, that I didn’t know existed. In front of my teammates he used to praise not my modest hockey skills, which I wouldn’t have minded so much, but my academic standing. Being kidded for being first in class in front of classmates was just as bad as being kidded for being last. I was better at basketball, especially when I began to grow. I turned out for the extra-mural Bantams, not knowing a thing

42

The Greater Glory

about the game. We had a very good coach, a young Jesuit, who insisted on all the basics. He was very patient and encouraging, with the result that I was scoring at least ten points a game. I continued playing in grade ten and then dropped out in my last year. Later I was to pick things up in college where I played for four years, but I never really got the jump shot down properly. At lunchtime, 11:40 to 1:00, a very competitive inter-class league took place. Even those who played on school teams were allowed to play, so the standards were fairly high. The whole school would be there roaring from the sidelines, and the refereeing was handled by senior boys who dared not make a bad call. When there were no scheduled games, there was a kind of free-for-all game – no shoes, just socks – for anybody who had the courage to get in before 200 screaming critics. It was the equivalent of shinny hockey where you learned to dribble low and shoot fast. The most important sport at St Paul’s was undoubtedly football. The senior high school team, the Crusaders, was legendary in Winnipeg. St Paul’s often won the city championship and was always competitive. Although Buzz, a very fine athlete and infinitely better than I ever hoped to be, had captained and quarterbacked the senior team for two years, I never got to play for that august group – at 110 pounds in grade eleven I was ruled out. But I did play inter-class for two years as quarterback. The equipment was spare and scanty, and we all got bruised with every tackle on that concrete-like field, but I loved the excitement, the skill, and the bodily collision. Another sport that I loved, although I was underweight, was boxing. Now, of course, boxing is rated very low among the sports and has been banned from most high schools and colleges because of the drastic head damage it causes then and later, but at that time little was known or at least publicized about its dire effects. Buzz was a wonderful boxer and in his navy years always won his weight-class bouts. At high school he had boxed a lot and was usually teamed up with our cousin, Bob Grassby. They were both in the same weight class and fought vigorously, usually, according to the tiny newspaper clippings, to a draw. With our old gloves at

Scruples

43

home he would kneel down and teach me some of the moves. By the time I got into high school, boxing wasn’t high on the agenda, but I joined up as soon as I heard that a coach was hired for lessons to be given in the evening in the high school gym. He was a tough young fellow and made his mark with us when, to emphasize how hard you had to hit, he smashed his bare fist against the wooden gym door until it shook. After the long hard prairie winter the spring came with a rush and the snow faded away in a few days like morning dew. Since spring is always late in the West, the time was short for outdoor sports before the early June exams. We had inter-class baseball, softball only, but as with everything at St Paul’s it was very competitive. I played third base on the class team and was fairly good at fielding and tolerable at hitting. What I liked most, though, was volleyball, which was new to me then. I was tall and skinny and learned to serve low and spike hard. Every night we could we played pick-up games from 3:05 when class ended until the boarders’ study bell at 5:00. The Jesuits didn’t force religion on their students, at least not overtly. There were only two class periods of religion per week, which dealt with the standard doctrines of the Church. I always found them interesting as they were filled with discussions, stories, and lots of questions. Compulsory chapel took place only once a month. The whole school piled in, even up in the choir loft, where one of the boys had to pump the organ. There was a sermon by one of the priests, usually a good one, then Benediction when the Eucharist was placed in a monstrance on the altar and hymns sung, and finally, for those who might want to avail themselves of it although there was no urging, much less compulsion, two confessional boxes at the back. A few of the boys did go to “confession,” but most avoided it for various reasons, mainly embarrassment, no doubt, in the presence of their classmates. If someone did go, the others thought that he must have something serious and really big to confess. There were always a few non-Catholics in most classes, both Protestants and a few Jews. They were accepted and treated the same as anyone else by students and faculty. They weren’t

44

The Greater Glory

obliged to participate in religion class or go to chapel, but curiously most of them did, even taking the religion exams and often excelling over their Catholic compatriots. Drama was strong at St Paul’s as it was in most Jesuit high schools. In grade nine I was given the lead in a one-act play. I remember my father coming to one of the last rehearsals and whispering to the harried director to make some changes, probably in articulation and projection as my voice was not strong, and I felt mortified at his intrusion. I have forgotten exactly what was done, but the play did go on the following night to little éclat. However, when a fellow student came on stage dressed as a maid – all female parts were played by boys – I couldn’t control my laughter at his outlandish outfit and bouffant hairdo, which I hadn’t seen in rehearsal, and I promptly forgot my lines. Art Comeau, who played the maid, started to ad-lib until the prompter finally got me back on track. Public speaking was important too. One of our speech teachers was a layman, Mr Hurley, who had a fine voice and presence. Besides providing us with set pieces, he taught us extemporaneous speaking and, above all, diction and voice projection, which I could have benefited from in the previous year’s play. He was rather a mysterious figure and lived in the Jesuit Community. Looking back, I think he was an alcoholic; the Jesuits were generous to down-and-outers and always had one or two of them around. They were a kind of retainer, given a job to do, paid a little, and given board and room. Most of those I ran into were very fine types, some very talented, like our speech teacher. These men seemed to be always in good spirits and many stayed for years, decades even, performing some humble task, especially as receptionists. Many of them had attended Jesuits schools and were loyal and completely trustworthy. The Jesuits had connections all over the world, and took these ill-starred people in with great kindness and alacrity. They all had some hidden story to tell, but no one probed into their lives unless they volunteered their stories themselves, which they rarely did. It was consummate charity. With the help of Mr Hurley I won a medal, third place, in the annual Public Speaking Contest, declaiming an excerpt from Macaulay’s

Scruples

45

“Impeachment of Warren Hastings.” First prize, I recall, went to a brilliant rendition of Churchill’s “Blood, Sweat and Tears” speech, complete with all the Churchillian inflections and intonations. It was dramatic rather than oratorical but in 1942 it swept the audience and the judges as well as me and the other contestants off our feet. As the war news deteriorated, the federal government ordered cadet corps to be formed in every high school across the country. They were to be run by the individual school, and the order was quickly implemented by the principal and rector, although there were a few faculty who were lukewarm to the war and so were opposed to military training. In our cadet corps there were no volunteers, all conscripts, the entire student body, all told, I must say, a pretty scraggly lot. We had no uniforms, no rifles, no equipment, no band, just bodies, and we marched either on the field in fine weather or on the nearby streets in rain or snow. In my platoon one of my classmates could never quite get the proper swing of marching. Instead of throwing out his arm and wrist in harmony with the opposite leg, he would invariably throw out his right arm with his rights leg, and his left arm with his left leg. Our sergeants and platoon officers were fellow students who were admirably chosen, as they quickly adjusted to their positions of minor authority and curiously enjoyed bellowing out the commands and ordering their charges about. Thus our training consisted mainly of drilling, with some sporadic pt tossed in. The marching was ragged at best, especially in the “column of route” which I never did quite figure out and so my rank stayed at the lowest for the entire two years. At this time Father John Holland filled both roles of rector and principal, as he filled many other roles when one of the staff fell ill. He was one of the finest men I ever met. He even taught French in grade ten – in my time for the entire year – and I can still hear the sound of his cracked and exhausted voice rolling out the French paradigms. When Canada began to suffer casualties in the war, he had a framed photograph of every St Paul’s boy killed in action, soldier, sailor, and airman, hung along the wall of the main building. His was the painful job of consoling grieving

46

The Greater Glory

parents. He kept track in a memo book of the thousands of boys who attended St Paul’s through the years, and he was the first one everyone wanted to see and reminisce with on return visits to the school. I had a few good friends during my high school years. There were four “Bobs” in the class, all from St Ignatius, and I liked the four of them: there wasn’t a suggestion of meanness or malice in any of them. One “Bob” went on to get a doctorate in history and became a professor in a western university; another became a multi-millionaire businessman but never lost his straightforward, honest ways. The friend I knew and liked best was Jack Whyte. He was a fine, strong kid with red hair that stood straight up. We had been together since grade two, and we used to wrestle to see who was the stronger. We were fairly evenly matched until we reached high school, when he grew faster and so had me down faster. We used to walk home together the three or four miles even in twenty-five below Fahrenheit, and to warm up we often stopped at Picardy’s for two doughnuts, 10 cents for both. I knew that was his carfare, but we rarely talked about money or the lack of it. He never wore a hat and was always cheerful and full of ideas about life and the future. He was fearless too: when he was only sixteen he took a summer job in the forests of bc, riding the rods all the way from Winnipeg to the West Coast and back, and almost suffocating from smoke in the Connaught and Spiral tunnels. There was the occasional dance at St Paul’s. I was a bumbling, undersized adolescent who viewed girls with awe and fear, but some of my more advanced friends pushed me to come. In desperation I begged my older sister to teach me a few dancing steps. She was very helpful and encouraging, and taught me enough to give me a little confidence. Although I felt stiff and awkward, I came to like the music of Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but especially the girls I met and danced with. When taking them home by streetcar, I couldn’t think of much small talk, but the girls I knew, except a few, were about as tongued-tied as I was. Of the 230 boys in the school about fifty or sixty were boarders. Some came from the farms of Manitoba but most came from the small towns and villages along the cn and cp rail lines to the east

Scruples

47

of the city, Dryden, Sioux Lookout, Kenora. They were good lads, by and large, lively but poorly educated in their elementary schools. Inevitably they formed a distinct group and, being in residence for the whole term, they were closer to the Jesuits, whom they revered. I used to eat lunch with them in their refectory. For 25 cents you could get all you wanted, soup, meat and potatoes, and pie at least three times a week. Polish nuns, round-faced and generous, served us at a wicket, even doling out seconds and thirds. They also cooked for the priests in their separate dining room, providing a few extras but basically the same menu as far as we could tell. My mother insisted on this hot meal in winter, and I regret foregoing it after a year. Despite all the activities into which I had thrown myself and which I enjoyed immensely, there came over me a cloud that in the next three years by slow degrees enveloped me and in the end almost did me in. The condition I found myself in is a psychological phenomenon known as scruples and is, as far as I know, almost exclusively confined to members of the Catholic Church. It is a kind of obsessive-compulsive mechanism that consists of a person becoming convinced that everything one does or thinks is either sinful or tending towards sin. The result is that one is perpetually wracked by doubt. Did I or did I not consent to the allegedly sinful thought or action? There is a constant brain activity going on: wondering, fretting, and doubting whether this, that, or indeed anything at all is sinful. Did I or did I not commit a sin in the perpetual whirligig of doubt? The condition leads to despair and sometimes to suicide. It started in my case when I had just turned fourteen and was associated, I believe, with three factors in my life. The first was that I was going through puberty. Much of the anguish and involuted thinking and worrying revolved around sexual thoughts, whether or not I had consented to or almost consented to, entertained or almost entertained a suggestive – and eventually almost everything proved suggestive – thought, image or dream. Even the reading of the Gospel in the version then current at Sunday Mass could be an occasion for torture. I would recognize the text that was coming and shrink until it came: at the words, “Blessed is the

48

The Greater Glory

womb that bore Thee and the paps that gave Thee suck,” I would hang my head in self-inflicted shame. There was very little that was not grist for the grinding millstone. The second factor was connected with my experience with the abusing priest six years before which still confused and haunted me. It was always at the back of my mind, and of course I had never revealed a whisper of it to anyone. Though there had not been complete sexual abuse, the whole episode had a terribly skewing effect. The third factor, I think, was the religious one. After winning a scholarship to St Paul’s I felt grateful and soon began a long odyssey of thanking God not only by prayer but also by self-denial. Though the notion was good in itself and presumably sincere, these acts of thanksgiving became increasingly obsessive and eventually propelled me into a vortex of penance and fasting. I had taken to reading the lives of the saints, hagiography, most of which were written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and aimed at edifying a vulnerable and unsuspecting readership. The focus seemed to be not only on the extraordinary and allegedly miraculous phenomena of the saints depicted but also on a morbid tendency of enumerating the extravagant mortifications of the individual in gruesome detail. The more penances, whippings, fasting, vigils, and so forth described, the merrier the author was. Presumably the lesson the reader should take was that, by emulation, the more pleasing this would be to Christ and that much closer to His sufferings. One little book I read at that time which spurred me on ad infinitum was the life of a young Parisian, Guy de Fontgalland, who secretly performed all kinds of self-denying tricks and died at the age of thirteen. He was a model to whom I prayed assiduously. As the grade nine year progressed I began to increase my prayers to several hours a day and deny myself all pleasures, including ordinary food. I went down to 100 pounds and I haunted every church in the city. If I didn’t have a hockey or basketball practice I would take off after school, loaded down with my briefcase crammed with books I didn’t need for homework just to add a penitential weight, and head off for miles in rain or snow for some new church door. There I would kneel and

Scruples

49

pray before the Sacred Presence for hours on end and then rush home by foot, exhausted and hungry, for a self-restricted supper. It became maniacal. Where was my family in this personal vortex? Where were the priests in whom I had put so much trust and who saw me every day? I would often spend three hours after class in the college chapel. The Jesuits would often see me there as they came into chapel after dinner, and none ever stopped to question me, although seeing me so often in their chapel must have seemed unusual to at least some of them. They were supposed to be the masters of spiritual discernment. However, I had become adept at hiding anything unusual from everybody, including my family. My mother knew something odd was afoot because she said to me once, “Are you still haunting churches?” She and my father, both of whom I loved dearly, obviously saw my gaunt appearance and skinny body, but I think that anything of this nature was completely beyond their knowledge and experience. Nor would they have known what to do about it even if they had became aware of the extent of my condition. A more consuming worry for both my parents at the time was the fact that Buzz was on a corvette in the North Atlantic, both hunting and eluding U-boats. I can still see my mother on her knees at her bedside praying that her son would come home unscathed. Thus, I do not blame my parents but I do to some extent blame the Jesuits who were my teachers and mentors and knew me well. However, in retrospect the blame is mainly mine, if blame there is: there was certainly pride and stubbornness on my part, not to mention guilt, shame, and above all bad judgment. This condition of scruples lasted three years, but it put a dent into my whole life. It had gradually enveloped my entire waking day and invaded even my dreams. One by one I gave up the sports I loved, the few friends I had. I vanished into a nether world. My studies became skewed. I found it hard to concentrate, to focus on anything for more than a short spell. Then, towards examination time in my graduating year, I was called in by the principal (dean in those days). He knew that something was awry, especially when I broke down and wept. He listened sympathetically and suggested

50

The Greater Glory

that I drop the two extra subjects that I was carrying. We also discussed a few personal things, and he told me to moderate the praying and fasting. I was extremely grateful. The interview, short as it was, shook me up and made me realize the extent of the foolishness I had indulged in during those long years. I started to think of revamping my life, of starting afresh. I was still only sixteen, and soon I began to feel hopeful and happy once again. It was enough to start with and then to go on and do reasonably well in the provincial examinations the following month and win the Governor General’s Medal for the highest academic standing over the high school years. Later as a priest when I came across people afflicted with scruples, my heart went out to them and I tried to assuage their torment as best I could. It is true that a person foundering like this rises from the morass mainly on his or her own efforts, but the long journey up is made easier by timely advice and a little encouragement along the way.

4 “Soft Lydian Airs”

after a summer at our cottage at Beachside on Lake Winnipeg I felt much better and was ready and eager to enter university in the fall. I was in good physical shape because of the work on the lawns and gardens, swimming, playing golf and some tennis. It was 1943 and I had just turned seventeen. I registered in late September – ostensibly to accommodate the Agriculture Faculty students working on the harvest but beautifully late for the rest of us – in the Faculty of Arts at the Fort Garry Campus of the University of Manitoba. In Freshman Arts we had to take five full courses, four of which were required, English, mathematics, one science (physics in my case), and French. That left only one elective and I chose Latin. In second year we had to take English and a foreign language, the other three being electives. Except for the medical and law students who registered at their downtown campuses, the whole student body, which at that time numbered only between 2–3,000, stood impatiently in line to sign up for their courses. The tedious process was supervised and regimented by the registrar of the university, a mean, swarthy, squat man who barked out commands and reprimanded anyone who strayed out of line. We learned later that after the president he was the most powerful and feared figure in the university. He was rigid and uncompromising, but he kept the academic standards high. There were few A’s in his regime, about ten percent I was told, and an A was seventy percent or over, if I am not mistaken. The only thing I remember about Freshman Week was the required attendance at

52

The Greater Glory

the Winnipeg Auditorium to hear the president’s welcoming address to the freshmen. Sydney Smith, who had been dean of law at Dalhousie, later president of the University of Toronto and then minister of external affairs in the federal cabinet, was a brilliant speaker, but for us young freshmen twisting on wooden seats, he was boring and verbose in a speech that lasted ninety minutes. On my registration form I requested that I wished to attend classes at St Paul’s College, one of the several affiliated colleges of the university. Two other affiliated colleges, which were also church-oriented, were United College and St John’s College, the former associated with the United Church of Canada, the latter with the Anglican Church of Canada. They, like St Paul’s, were located on separate campuses, all in downtown Winnipeg. Even the first two years of Arts and Science of the university, known as Junior Division, were situated downtown on the Broadway campus. I think that the only remuneration the affiliated colleges received from the university was the tuition of those who had requested to attend them on their registration forms. As there were only about 25 to 30 students in total at St Paul’s and the tuition was a minuscule $120 per year, the budget must have been very stringent. The administration at St Paul’s was combined with the high school and the tuition of the 230 boys in the high school supplied the deficit, but apart from rector and bursar, who were common to both, there were the dean of the college and the faculty. But the latter was a tiny group, five in all, including four Jesuits who had a vow of poverty and so received no salary. The dean, Father Gerald Lahey, a remarkable man who had studied at Cambridge and wrote the first work on Gerard Manley Hopkins, taught all four years of English – he read all the plays of Shakespeare every summer; Fr Eric Smith, a brilliant linguist who knew a dozen languages and could preach in most of them, taught all the Latin and the Greek, plus sociology; Fr Francis Nelligan, who used to jump up and down to make a point, taught medieval philosophy; Fr Thomas Malone, a chaplain in the navy and excellent teacher, taught French literature, though there was little commentary or background; and Dr Adam Giesenger, an extraordinarily bright scientist, taught all the mathematics and science courses, at

“Soft Lydian Airs”

53

least five in all, and, as a layman, alone received a salary, which would have been absurdly low by today’s standards. That comprised the entire faculty at tiny St Paul’s College in those years. If you wanted history, political science, or any other course you had to traipse over to United College or Junior Division on Broadway. In the freshman and sophomore years, there were four lectures a week in each of the five two-term courses required for a full program, a total of twenty hours a week of class. In the junior and senior years, Senior Division as it was called, a full program was reduced to four courses, meeting three times a week for the fiftyminute lecture: even that is heavy by today’s standards. There was some cutting of lectures, but with such a tiny group your absence was noted and could be reported. I found most of the lectures interesting, especially Fr Lahey’s English classes. He would start off with a commentary and background of the author – I recall taking copious notes – and then he would read long selected passages of the text in a melodious and almost haunting voice. After class I would review the lecture in my memory and that night I would go over passages that moved me and commit them to memory. We covered huge swathes of the so-called corpus of English literature in those four years. In junior year, for example, among much else we studied large parts of Milton, and had a dose of Spenser as well as the metaphysicals. And then on to the novel in senior year, thirteen I recall, which had to be read the summer before. We had a multitude of tests, quizzes, mid-terms, and, of course, essays to contend with. I spent countless hours writing essays, and one difficulty was the inadequacy of the tiny library at St Paul’s. I had to go elsewhere for the books and, since you could use only the library of the college in which you were registered, I was forced to use the public libraries of Winnipeg, which even in those days carried most of the standard works that I needed. A wonderful place to work was the Cornish Library near Maryland Bridge. It was bright and airy with high ceilings and windows; it had solid, wide tables on which you could spread your material, and it was cozy on those bitter winter days, and, above all, quiet. I developed a personal writing style in composing those papers, rather florid

54

The Greater Glory

in retrospect, but usually I managed an A, plus or minus. I fretted feverishly at exam times, but I got A’s in most courses except English on which, curiously, I spent most of my study time but in which I never reached higher than a B. One of the moral problems that troubled the consciences of intellectual Catholics in those days and seems so remote to our more normal and balanced consciences today was the Index of Forbidden Books, a lengthy list of books that Catholics were forbidden to read without permission of their bishop. It included many philosophical and theological works from Germany and France but, more immediately, it covered all the non-Catholic translations of the Bible and most of the French novelists, such as Victor Hugo and the two Dumases, père et fils. A Catholic who wished to read even the magnificent King James version of the Bible or, say, Hugo’s Les Miserables had to have a good reason and then obtain permission from the bishop of the diocese in which he or she lived. This was not that simple because in Winnipeg, for example, one had to track down the busy and itinerant bishop, who in his later years spent much of his time at his second residence north of the city. I was observant, and fortunately I was able to obtain permission from one of the bishop’s deputies who happened to be my English professor, Fr Gerald Lahey. As it turned out, since I stopped studying French literature after second year, I had to ask permission for only one English novel that happened to be on the Index and also on our university program, Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. It was a sign of my literary innocence that I was bothered by the hero’s hopping from bed to bed on his European travels, but the more serious point was that any practising Catholic who read any book on the Index without the required permission felt that he or she was committing a grievous sin and needed to go to confession to relieve the burden. Although the Index has long been swept away, at the time it was just one more little sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of honest Catholics. I was very fond of languages, especially Latin and Greek. I knew French grammar well and could read the language fluently, but in those days there was no concern for communication, with the sad

“Soft Lydian Airs”

55

result that I never learned to speak or understand our second language above the basic level. The Latin and especially the Greek paradigms I loved to memorize and chant to myself. After most classes I would go over the material covered in class and memorize both the vocabulary I hadn’t seen before and often a passage that struck me during class. I was able to take only one year of Greek but the grammatical background later proved invaluable. We covered an enormous amount of Latin in those four years, but unfortunately the texts were all translated for us in class. My favorite authors were Catullus, Horace, and Martial. In my senior year I took a sociology course from a newly arrived lay professor, a German Jewish refugee who had just finished his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He transmitted to our tiny class of four the enthusiasm and excitement of the new ideas of the “Chicago School,” and had us writing papers on such topics as the ecological effect of Winnipeg’s railways on the city and its citizens. One of the most active groups on campus was the Newman Club, which still thrives on most campuses to this day. Its purpose is to provide social and religious activities for Roman Catholic students on a secular campus. Although I was already enrolled in a Catholic college, I eagerly joined because it gave me access to Catholic students throughout the university. It never was a large group but it organized a wide variety of interesting activities, one of the most popular being the tea dances that took place in late afternoon during the week after most of the classes were over. There was always good music, records of course, and lots of doughnuts, and I met many girls and boys, some older from law and medicine, but most were my age. I enjoyed the toboggan parties too. There was even a weekend retreat in the fall on the Fort Garry Campus, a period of spiritual talks and reflection, but I found the silence that we were asked to observe between talks difficult and tedious. Once a week during term eight or ten of us used to meet at one of our homes in the evening to thrash out some topic that we were supposed to prepare for at least in a cursory way, but most came to the gathering fresh and ignorant though full of confidence. The topics at times were rather heavy and sometimes arcane, but that didn’t stop any of us from holding

56

The Greater Glory

a position with force, if not logic. Tired out by cross-fire argumentation, we looked forward to the sandwiches, cookies, and coffee provided by the host, and it was all over by ten. The meetings were supposed to consist of intellectual exchange, but the result was mainly social, which all of us seemed to accept. Another more specifically religious group I joined for a year or two was the Sodality of Mary. Its purpose was to improve one’s life and do things for others, especially the poor and disadvantaged. This was commendable in itself but the group, which was world-wide and run by the Jesuits, tended to be elitist. One was supposed to say a few prayers in honour of Mary each day and to meet each week for more prayers and a pep talk from the chaplain. It was rather remarkable to see hulking late adolescents who had other thoughts on their minds in most of their waking hours reciting these prayers to Mary. I wonder whether they ever focused on the theological implications of: “A virgin brought forth and a virgin remained.” One of the activities organized by the sodality was a retreat at the Trappist monastery, a few miles south of Winnipeg. A retreat in the traditional Catholic sense was a spiritual getting away from the ordinary routine of life and for a few days or more focusing on the so-called eternal verities. A full-fledged retreat was a new experience for me and also for the dozen other young fellows from St Paul’s College. The setting was ideal in the peaceful surroundings of the Trappists, who spoke only on very restricted occasions. I was asked to go there a day or two early and help set up the quarters we were to occupy. I was introduced to two very interesting monks who were in charge of the guest quarters. Although the monastery was situated close to Winnipeg, which was largely an English-speaking stronghold, the monks were almost all francophones. Père Amadis was a Quebecer, a jolly, middle-aged, stocky man, forever smiling and seemingly happy to have permission to converse with me. We talked in both languages (I was glad to practise my French), and he spoke in a thin, high voice, perhaps so from lack of use. I could perceive that he wanted me to become a Trappist, but wisely he never came right out and said so. Later, I did consider entering

“Soft Lydian Airs”

57

their Order, which was a branch of the Cistercians, founded by St Bernard in the twelfth century and reformed in the seventeenth. They were vegetarians and since they were also vegans they never tasted the wonderful cheeses that they made on their farm. They were choir monks, getting up at 2 a.m. to sing the first part of their office, Matins, but with all their prayers, farm-work, fasting, and penance they had little time left for the intellectual life, although they had many intellectuals in their history, including Thomas Merton. The other monk I got to know was in charge of the guesthouse, Père Frederick, a robust Quebecer with a nice sense of humour. He was full of practical jokes, amazing for one so cut off from the world. Though the monks did not speak to one another, they communicated brilliantly by an elaborate code of signs. You would see one monk pass another and then seemingly unaccountably chuckle to himself as he went on his quiet way. The retreat was directed by a Jesuit from the French Canadian Province or Group, Père Amann, an Egyptian who spoke perfect English. He taught English at St Boniface College, which at that time was affiliated with the University of Manitoba. He gave brilliant talks and often brought in the English and Greek classics, especially the Antigone of Sophocles, to illustrate his points. He called us all into his room individually and asked us about our futures but at least to me he never pushed the desirability of the priesthood, a stance I, and I presume the others, fully appreciated. We weren’t supposed to speak to one another apart from the lunch-hour break and a bit of sports, but since the food was tasty and plentiful we didn’t mind the restriction. I came away from that tranquil, sylvan spot and experience strengthened and uplifted in mind and spirit, but as always I was glad to get home to my family once again. In those years I began to become interested in classical music. My first purchase of a classical record was Liszt’s “Der Liebestraum” and the second, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” both on the old 78’s but good recordings that affected me deeply. I also used to attend as many as I could afford of a wonderful concert series of great single artists like Mischa Elman and Igor Gorin. The performances, which were a kind of tour de force, took place in the only

58

The Greater Glory

suitable concert hall in the city, the Winnipeg Auditorium. The seats were hard but the acoustics were good and the price right – 65 cents. These artists, mostly from New York, crisscrossed the continent to certain cities, and Winnipeg was lucky enough to be one they always stopped at. It was a very musical city and had been since its beginnings in the Scottish tradition. Every high school had its choir and orchestra, and each year there was an enormous school musical festival that lasted two weeks and was presided over by exacting adjudicators from the British Isles. I played a lot of basketball in those years. The inter-university program had been cancelled during the war years and not yet revived, so we played what was known as inter-faculty ball, science, arts, agriculture, the affiliated colleges, etc. There was a junior and a senior league, and strangely the junior league had superior teams. We were lucky to have an excellent coach and tiny St Paul’s, with seven players, won the university basketball title in 1946 and 1947 against science. We had a small newspaper at the college called The Crusader. It came out a few times each term, and Joe O’Sullivan, a brilliant fellow from Brandon, and I were editors. We wrote most of the articles and editorials, which were rather heavy and sonorous. It was excellent practice, though, writing for a deadline and going to press: we had to set up every page, usually eight, and work with the printers, who were helpful and professional. The birth of each issue was a kind of triumph. We had a few ads and finally paid the advertising manager 20 per cent in order to get more ads and so break even. I worked for a bit on the university newspaper, The Manitoban, but found that it was run by a clique. Yet it was well written and at times controversial: at one point an article criticizing the Canadian war effort created a huge uproar in the city and the perpetrators were banished. Though there was not much extra time I still managed to get in some bridge. Most of those who joined between lectures were inexpert like myself but at times a little spice was added when we invited a few of the professors to join in. I had learned the basics from my parents, who loved the game. They played the Culbertson system, which was not hard to learn, and I was allowed to watch

“Soft Lydian Airs”

59

from behind their chairs as they bid and played a hand with their friends. As long as I kept quiet they did not mind at all; in fact they both encouraged it. They played well, but never seemed to dwell on a misplay. They also played for stakes, very tiny indeed, one-twentieth of a cent a point, but it added a little zest and caution to the bidding and playing. In the fall of 1944 when I had turned 18 I joined the untd, the University Naval Training Division, the Canadian navy’s officer training branch at the universities. D-Day, of course, had taken place in the spring and the war news was optimistic but the war was far from over and the Ardennes was many months away. Every Saturday we trained for eight hours at the old Winnipeg Winter Club, which had been taken over by the navy and renamed hmcs Chippawa. My brother Que and I left the house at seven by bus to be there for the roll call. The only notable thing I remember about the training during that winter was learning to tie and untie the multifarious naval knots and drilling and marching on the old indoor skating rink on inclement days and on good days outside on the snowy streets of the city. After being yelled at by the petty officer, with his heavy dosage of the “f ” word used interchangeably as verb, noun and participle, I took turns giving commands to my fellows in the platoon, which was quite helpful for self-confidence and voice projection. In early May after the exams about a hundred of us untd’ers boarded the train to the west coast for further training. The trip in those days took two full days and nights. I had been through the Rockies many times before, but it was still thrilling to wind through the tunnels and along the Kicking Horse Pass. We crossed to Vancouver Island on one of the princess ferries and checked in at the naval base at Esquimalt outside Victoria. We were issued long white canvas hammocks and a beautiful snowwhite Hudson Bay blanket about eight feet in length, long enough to tuck under our feet. We were taught to sling our hammocks taut on iron bars about six or seven feet above the cement floor. They had to be taut to keep your back straight, and tight to avoid crashing to the floor. Once you got in and lay flat and straight, they were very comfortable. The first night there I gingerly

60

The Greater Glory

climbed up and in and went immediately to sleep without moving a muscle. We were shattered from our sleep early the next morning by the boatswain’s whistle, but something else shattering came through the loudspeaker: the war in Europe was over. The news had an exhilarating effect on everybody, of course, but at the same time it seemed to dampen the enthusiasm and focus of the training officers. Yet the war in the Pacific was still on, and we even had a Japanese mini-submarine scare when what there was of the Northwest Pacific American Fleet came dashing out of the Juan de Fuca Straits. I counted at least twenty ships. But apart from that little excitement our training seemed to drag on. We did some boat pulling and heard lectures every day, one or two of interest on how we were combating the German acoustic torpedo. These took place at Royal Roads, the naval college across the bay, with its lovely grounds and gardens where I wrote a forgettable poem during one of the sleepy lectures. We also took a motor launch out to a corvette in the bay to spend most of the beautiful, sunny days chipping paint off the steel decks and climbing down a narrow ladder to hoist up paint from the paint locker deep in the bow. More than one rating had to be hauled up after being overcome by paint fumes. We seemed to have short-arms inspections every other day, and we did a lot of pt. As we stood in line for our pt equipment, suddenly a petty officer emerged from the door and bellowed: “Sorry, mates, only 6’s and 12’s left.” I felt only a bit roomy in the latter with my size 11 feet. The canteen was a haven after hours. We devoured huge quantities of date-squares baked by the local women and, being too young to drink, we settled for Cokes. Soon enough the three weeks were over and we were back on the train through the Rockies at His Majesty’s expense, and racing at seventy miles an hour across the Prairies, a 800-mile endless stretch that somewhat resembles the sea we had just left and is perhaps why so many prairie boys joined the navy during the two Great Wars. When the war in the Pacific came to an end in early August, I decided not to stay in the untd, despite strong urging from the officers at Chippawa to remain. Perhaps Ottawa feared still another war with the Russians. In any event it took a long time

“Soft Lydian Airs”

61

to be discharged but I finally turned in my able-bodied seaman’s itchy jumpers and seven-seas trousers and bought for two dollars the most comfortable boots I have ever worn. Shortly after the war, when the international scene was still in turmoil, a powerful group of young people in the city felt compelled to help solve the problems of the world . They decided to form an organization that came to be called the Winnipeg Youth Council. As far as I recollect from this distance, the impetus seemed to come not only from a sincere and noble desire to change the world for the better but more immediately from an immense admiration for the exploits of the Soviet Union during the war and a sympathy with its ideals and activities. I feel sure that most of those who joined, if not all, were unaware of the countless atrocities the Soviets had perpetrated before and during the war. Some of them must have heard something but, like so many academics and many politicians, they chose either to ignore or perhaps not believe it. In any event the main instigators were definitely on the left side of the Canadian centre and strongly supported the Soviet world vision and cause. At that time the conservative or rightwing mindset in Canada found it difficult to distinguish between Socialism and Communism. Winnipeg had long been a centre of left-wing activities. In the background was the Winnipeg General Strike, a year after the end of the First World War, fomented by angry trade unionists from the British Isles and some disaffected eastern Europeans. The whole city was at a standstill with not only the firemen and police on strike but also the streetcar operators and all delivery men – no bread, no milk, no ice. My father had to go to the country to fetch milk for my mother’s two babies, and responsible businessmen volunteered for fire and police duty. My Dad and uncle, Arthur Grassby, patrolled unarmed in the suburbs but, as my brother later said, there wasn’t much action in the suburbs. The climax came on the Saturday when the Riot Act, according to the record, was read by the mayor from the steps of the City Hall, but my father always maintained that the Riot Act was read from the parapet of the Bank of Montreal at the corner of Portage and Main. Perhaps the act was read more than once. Across the street as my father

62

The Greater Glory

worked in his office – they worked on Saturday mornings then – a striker with a flaming gun was pushed through the main glass door. Streetcars were overturned and burned, but with the reading of the Riot Act the strike fell apart. Several leaders were charged, convicted, and sentenced to Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Among these was John Queen, later to be elected mayor of the city time after time during the thirties. In 1946 the youth groups in the city slowly became aware that a grand council of Winnipeg youth was about to be formed. One delegate from each association was permitted, however large or small the group. The Catholics were alerted and, suspecting that the organization threatened to be Communist inspired, representatives from every Catholic youth group in the city was invited to attend a private meeting at St Paul’s College beforehand in order to be briefed on what they might do and might expect at the council’s sessions. Representatives from about twenty Catholic youth groups, mostly from the parishes in the city, attended. A clever young priest from one of the parishes was asked to take the chair and he attempted to outline what he surmised were the purpose and thrust of the upcoming Youth Council. This was completely new territory to most of these young Catholics, who came from their parochial and often ethnic enclaves with no clue as to what it was all about, but they did ask intelligent questions, and when the meeting was over they had at least some idea of what to expect in the next few days. I represented the Newman Club of the University of Manitoba and my friend Joe O’Sullivan, the students of St Paul’s College. Joe was probably the brightest young man I ever knew. He soon grasped the tenor of the sessions and intervened often in an articulate and logical manner. (He later went on to the University of Toronto and obtained his ma in history, entered law and later politics, and finally became a distinguished judge on the Manitoba court.) I can’t remember how many groups convened but I would say around 200, from a multiplicity of church and social organizations of every denomination, interest, and persuasion. Most, like the Catholics, had never experienced anything like this before. An exception was the Jewish young people who knew from the outset

“Soft Lydian Airs”

63

what they were about. I got to know many of them with whom I immediately became friends. It soon became clear that a small number of very left-wing and communist groups fully intended to get elected and take over the organization. Representing a number of small groups such as the Winnipeg Dynamo Club, the communists were articulate, well organized, and very knowledgeable in parliamentary procedure and especially in controlling meetings. They had obviously been trained in speaking and debating and had been carefully prepared and briefed before the meetings. It was agonizing to contrast their logical and persuasive presentations with the halting, mumbling gibberish of most of us others. One of their problems, however, was the sheer number of the opposing groups, disorganized as they were, and gradually it was becoming more evident to everybody present after so many pro-Soviet presentations, articulate as they might have been, that the communists and Soviet sympathizers were heading for a take-over. But large opposing factions shouldn’t pose a problem, they probably reasoned: split the vote of the majority opposing, and split it they did with clever and confusing motions, undoubtedly prepared well beforehand. The result was the election of a chairman and board of the pro-Russian sympathizers with token representation in minor roles for the others, and the passing of a draft constitution favourable to their cause and purpose. While Joe O’Sullivan and I watched in dismay, I leaned over to him and said, “What a debacle.” As I left the city soon afterwards, I don’t know how effective the council was through the years, despite its grandiose and surreptitious plans, or how long it lasted, but to me the whole episode was a persuasive lesson on the necessity of being properly trained and prepared for anything important you undertake. During my university years, all of which I enjoyed immensely, I began to experience the growing conviction that after graduation I would become a Jesuit, but at this point I didn’t rule out other alternatives. Going on in classics for the ma at Manitoba and then later to Toronto for a phd was a distinct and probably the most attractive alternate possibility. I thought seriously also of Law, and my third choice was going into business for myself. I didn’t feel

64

The Greater Glory

averse to the idea of making money and a lot of it, though even then I thought that I would have had to enroll in commerce at the university for a second degree. However, my first choice was clearly to apply to the Jesuits. Their life of scholarship greatly appealed to me, and I had a strong desire to help others and do some good, however vague that notion was in my mind. Nobody coaxed me, nobody tried to persuade me to make a decision for the Jesuits, neither my mother, father or much less members of the Order, who, I learned later, are forbidden to urge potential recruits to join their ranks. I was fully aware that the life consisted in observing the three vows of religion, poverty, chastity and obedience, but beyond that I knew little of what it entailed. However, I knew many Jesuits and for the most part admired and respected them. I was particularly fond of Fr Gerald Lahey, who was a fine scholar and teacher but above all a warm and human person, even noble. As chaplain of the Newman Club he knew everybody, and counselled and encouraged thousands of students in his ministerial career. He rated scholarship highly but helping others came first. By this time I had emerged from the dark days of scrupulosity in high school, but there were still scars and a tendency to fall back into the pit. I still said several daily prayers and went to Mass at least once a week apart from Sundays. I knew that I still veered towards doing things more perfectly than most merited, and that I was overly careful not to offend others and to keep in their good graces, but it never became, I feel, an excessive preoccupation. In my studies I could concentrate for only two hours at a time, but there were so many other activities that I was glad to focus elsewhere. I knew and liked many girls and took them out to dances and other Newman Club activities, but I never went “steady” with any of them. Though I was getting over my fear of women and enjoyed their company, I still felt somewhat uneasy when alone with them. Perhaps I was still carrying a lot of baggage from the past, but perhaps half consciously I felt that a serious relationship would militate against my desire to become a Jesuit. After Christmas of my graduating year I knew that soon I had to make a decision about the following year. As the urge to join the Jesuits grew stronger, I made an appointment with the head

“Soft Lydian Airs”

65

of the Jesuits in Canada who was staying in the college at that time for his annual visit. I had no trepidation beforehand but went and rapped on his door with the confident feeling that I would be chatting with an equal. The meeting turned out to be disappointing. Father John Swain was a short, dour, pear-shaped man with little personality. He was kind enough in his questions but monosyllabic and seemingly insouciant in reaction to my answers. He was obviously sizing me up, and I think that he would have considered it highly impertinent if he knew that I, a twenty-year old and a prospective neophyte, was also sizing him up to see what kind of person I would have to deal with if I entered. He asked me about some personal matters, which I answered as honestly and forthrightly as I could, but I think that he misinterpreted my answers when I mentioned the scruples episode, deducing that I might be having trouble with chastity. But the first move was now over, and he must have approved because I next met with four of the Jesuits I knew well who whisked me through a perfunctory questioning. They too approved my decision, and I was informed that I was to appear at the novitiate in Guelph, Ontario, on the seventh of September the coming fall. My father was rather dubious about the whole matter, and asked to see Fr Swain. He was not greatly impressed with Fr Swain, especially his inability to react humorously when my father said, “I have great admiration for you Jesuits, Father Swain, but you spend fifteen years in training Jesuits, and then proceed to kill them with over-work.” It was rather a brash thing to say to the man who was later to become acting head of the whole Order in Rome. It was said in jest, but had an element of truth, as my father had seen many Jesuits die of heart attacks in their early forties. Why, after my experience with the Jesuit pedophile many years before, would I wish to commit myself to that same group that had harbored such a criminal for so many years? At the time of my experience I was only ten years old and made no connection between child-abuse and the social structures of the priesthood. Nor did I later associate that man with the many Jesuits I knew in high school and college, who were kind, generous, and sincere. The extent of pederasty among the Catholic clergy was completely

66

The Greater Glory

unknown to me then and even much later. I am aware of only two cases among the hundreds of Jesuits I knew and, although I might have been naïve, it is only in recent years that I have come to see its wider incidence. In any event the formal preparations had been made. Later a list was mailed of the clothes and appurtenances required upon entrance. My mother dutifully purchased and checked off the list but there were a few items that she refused to buy as being obsolete, like nightshirts. She had a beautiful overcoat of Melton cloth made for me which I still had not worn out after twenty years of use. I came with her on those shopping tours, of course, and I could see that she was sad to have me go, but she never said a word against my leaving. She wanted what I wanted, and although she approved of my decision she grieved that I would not be home for a long time and perhaps never. Mother arranged for the whole family to spend the month before I went away at Banff, where we all had had such wonderful summers together ten years earlier. Nine in all, we entrained from Winnipeg and spent July in a pleasant house in downtown Banff. Accompanying us was my brother Buzz, safe home from his service as an officer in the Canadian navy on the North Atlantic, his lovely wife, Pat, whom he had married in Halifax, and their young firstborn, Joy. Buzz had rejoined the rail end of Canadian Pacific and had been assigned to the Banff Springs office for the summer. In retrospect and even at the time I realized what a courageous and generous act it was on mother’s part to arrange this trip, because her heart condition was then worsening and the thin mountain air forced her to spend much of the time in bed. Her health improved on the return to the prairies and August soon passed when the time came to leave Winnipeg. As a final family gesture Mom, Dad, and Larcy accompanied me east, first to Montreal to the Ritz Carlton and Quebec City to the Chateau Frontenac, and then on to Guelph for the final goodbye. What lay behind, apart from two major reversals, was a childhood and youth largely shaped by my family, my mother and father and four brothers and sisters, a life largely of happiness and love; what lay ahead was, of course, unknown, but I could scarcely expect or hope for more.

5 “Elected Silence”

the jesuit novitiate was located on a fine property just north of the city of Guelph, Ontario. It was a large farm that had been acquired by the English Jesuits of Canada sometime before the First World War. Until that time English-speaking novices had joined the Order in Montreal at the francophone novitiate outside the city. The main building, which was the original farmhouse, had an elegant façade with white pillars and large, high windows flanked by luxuriant spiraea bushes. Behind was an ugly stucco structure of three storeys that included dining-rooms and kitchen on the first floor, classrooms on the second, and an infirmary and some living quarters on the third. Adjoining this and facing south was the chapel, attractive within, nondescript without, and somehow connected to the chapel beneath and behind were the living quarters of the novices, known as Farrs, probably the remains of another farm-dwelling on the property. Accompanied by my mother, father, and sister, I came by taxi from the train station and turned up the handsome winding driveway to the front door. It was a quarter after six as I rang the bell. A large smiling man in a black cassock opened the white door. He welcomed us warmly but I had trouble making out what he was saying as he spoke with an obvious speech impediment. The Master of Novices was summoned and he too welcomed us and invited us to supper. He was a tall, athletic-looking man in his early forties with glasses, ruddy complexion, and a pleasant smile. He stayed no more than two minutes, excused himself, and was gone.

68

The Greater Glory

Dinner was then announced by a second man with a speech impediment. That was two out of three in five minutes. We had a pleasant supper served by two of the novices and then my father asked to see the quarters where I was to stay, out of bounds to women; in the tiny cubicle with the white linen curtains pulled back during the day he reached down and pressed on the hard mattress on which I was to sleep, looked up at me but said nothing. The goodbyes were short but tearful and then my family was off to the Guelph station and then the long trip from Toronto to Winnipeg. It was two and a half years before I saw any of them again. Although I was twenty-one years old, I shed a tear of loneliness that night but soon fell asleep on the paper-thin mattress, a sleep broken by the raucous clang of a bell at six next morning. I didn’t exactly bolt out of bed as we were later told to do – as if the bed were on fire – but I quickly washed in the tiny hand-basin near the bed, dressed, and headed to the chapel. After some prayers, Mass, and breakfast, we novices, or more correctly postulants until we received our cassocks in ten days, were assembled in a kind of classroom and briefed about what we were to do in the period before a short retreat of three days leading to “the taking of the cassock.” Though a few came in later in September just before the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, most of the fellows were here for the 8th of September, a special feast day of the Blessed Virgin. We were twenty-three in all, a record number for a decade or so, coming from many parts of Canada and the United States, and we ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-nine, the majority being around twenty. As I got to know more, although not much, about each of them, some like myself had Bachelor of Arts degrees, most had a high school diploma or a year of two of university, and a few had served in the Canadian or American forces. The majority were Canadians of Irish ancestry together with a few French and Italians. All had been at least in the top third of their academic classes, and many at the very top. At that time a requirement for everyone was at least three years of Latin and those lacking it had to come up to that level before acceptance. One so lacking was a chap who was a convert from Anglicanism. After being discharged from the army he had requested entrance after a three-year

“Elected Silence”

69

preliminary period and had been sent to Loyola College in Montreal to plough through Latin grammar and syntax. This standard sounds obsolete today but since all the lectures, texts, and even exams for the courses in the long grinding program of studies ahead would be in Latin, whatever its quality and accent, it made sense to be well grounded in the basics of the language. Even in the novitiate we were to have “Latin memory” several times a week, but more of that later. The duration of the novitiate was two years, two years to the day. We were the first-year group, called the Primi; the secondyear men were the Secundi. There were only four of them, but they were senior to us and the head fellow who was appointed by the master of novices was called the admonitor. He was a kind of god who knew all the rules and customs and, under the master, directed our day. He was assisted by a sub-admonitor, and there was even a sub-sub-admonitor, called by us the “sub-sub,” who seemed to lurk modestly in the background and look after the lowly and dirty jobs. The admonitor was changed after six months, but since there was only a corporal’s guard of four above us, two of the four occupied the august office. Seniority was an important element in our life. Even among the Primi anyone who had come through the door first, even two minutes before according to the roll of the dice of the taxi chosen, was senior, and took charge of a group of three called a band when the occasion offered. It was considered helpful to one’s humility to be told by a raw sixteen-year old as leader of the band to do this or that without any apparent purpose. Why did these eager young men choose to become celibate Jesuit priests? It was difficult to say at that early time but I presume that we all had approximately the same rather vague, indeterminate notions and convictions. We all wanted to do some good and serve the Church, and the requirement happened to be celibacy and for the Jesuits an added fillip of poverty and obedience. What it all entailed was mercifully closed to us then. For myself I chose the Jesuits because of their scholarship, their history, and above all the goodness and sincerity of most of those whom I had met over the years. Before I left Winnipeg I was required to get permission from the archbishop of Winnipeg to join a religious

70

The Greater Glory

order. It was with some trepidation that I went to call on him as I knew that there was an acute shortage of diocesan or secular priests in his diocese. He received me kindly and after revealing that he himself had once belonged to a religious order, he sent me cheerfully off with the required “dimissal” papers. After a short three-day retreat conducted by one of the Secundi, we were all given our cassocks, a long black soutane reaching to the ankles. It was loose but held in place by a wide cloth belt that went around the waist and then folded over to hang down in a double width. It was not unattractive when adjusted correctly and neatly, but the catch was that our first cassocks were not new. Mine was almost green and shiny with wear and even with assiduous rubbing the front never looked clean. The picture I sent home of myself in that garb so alarmed my mother that she immediately went to a tailor to have a new one made. Fortunately for me she was diverted before her plan materialized. Strung on the band or cincture of the cassock was a black rosary, very long but looped around a few times so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground. Even with that precaution the rosary often caught on door handles or plunged to the floor if not carefully looped. Individual beads were to be found everywhere, and repair tweezers were in constant demand. Once we had our cassocks we put away our secular clothes, which were to be used only for walking to town to the doctor or dentist, and the life of a Jesuit novice began in earnest. Every minute of every day was filled, allotted to a multiplicity of fragments of time that, except for an hour of prayer or meditation from six to seven each morning, were of excruciatingly short duration, generally of fifteen minutes, no longer than half an hour. We would just get into something and the bell would jangle for the next event, stopping us short in our tracks. If we were writing some deliciously important inspiration, or “light” as it was known, in our notebooks, we had to jam on the brakes, “even leaving the letter unfinished” – not a correspondence letter but the letter of the alphabet. The object was to inculcate obedience, a huge item for the Jesuits, and also detachment: that is, one should never get too attached to anything, even, if that were possible, memorizing passages from the Bible in Latin which we were required to do for fifteen minutes

“Elected Silence”

71

twice a week. That required cold, hard memory as we began with the Gospel of Matthew, which starts off with the genealogy of Christ. It tended to get sticky with names like Aminadab, Rahab, and Ozias, not only the names but the order of the names. Tucked in our beds and happily enjoying the half privacy of a sheeted cubicle, we were roused by the waking bell at 5:30 a.m. We were told to jump out of bed, instantly onto our knees for a minute of prayer, and then wash and dress for the “Visit” to the chapel at 5:55. As there were only three or four toilets for thirty men, washing and shaving were negotiated in one’s cubicle from a porcelain hand-basin of ice-cold water and a tiny sliver of mirror. I didn’t have a heavy beard then but some had, though shaving after breakfast in the sink, still no hot water, was tolerated. After “Visit” at six o’clock we all trooped off to the “Ascetory,” a kind of classroom where we all had our desks, and underneath, our kneelers, which some were forever kicking or knocking over. We spent the next hour in the Ascetory, praying or meditating, going over material that we had meticulously prepared the night before. It was not supposed to be an intellectual exercise but a prayerful reflection on the three main themes or points of the subject prepared. We could stand, kneel, or sit, according to the necessity of desperately trying to stay awake in an overheated room with thirty proximate bodies from six to seven a.m. The preferred position was standing by one’s desk without holding on, but even then there were many falls to the hardwood floor, which at least jarred the rest into semi-wakefulness. Every movement of every other body immediately registered on one’s consciousness, though we weren’t supposed to look about or even notice anything beyond our own little private desk. This desk was of rough wood with a high shelf for books and notebooks, but since only two or three books were allowed, including a New Testament and an Imitation of Christ, a beautiful but spiritually suspect devotional book, there was plenty of room for arms and elbows. At seven, Mass was celebrated by either the master of novices or the rector of the house. The chapel was large enough to hold 100, novices on the left, juniors (those with vows after two years and engaged in study) on the right, brothers and the priests at the

72

The Greater Glory

back. The chapel was quite handsomely decorated with middlebrown wainscoting going up to the small stained glass windows, and since the Jesuits didn’t sing the office, there were no choir stalls but solid and attractive pews like an ordinary church. The chancel or sanctuary was raised and was backed by three wooden altars, high and nicely hand-carved; the main altar was higher and set back with an attractive reredos of wood. It was a prayerful place, and I always looked forward to the time we spent there. The stained glass depicted among other things portraits of the young Jesuit saints. However, apart from Mass, a shorter meditation and the recitation of the Litanies in the evening we didn’t spend much time there, unlike the choir monks. When the Jesuit Order was founded in the sixteenth century, it was a dramatic change for a religious order not to chant the office in common and the determined opposition of the popes and many cardinals almost prevented its establishment. Ignatius, however, was so convinced that choir would militate against the freedom to perform apostolic works that the popes finally gave in and dispensed the Order from choir, although at the beginning a small group in Rome chanted the office until final approval was granted. On most days the Mass was short with no singing, but performed with dignity. On special days – feast days of Christ or the saints – we had singing, of the Mass if it were a High Mass and often just the singing of hymns. There was a choir led by a junior with musical training, although he himself had an appalling, scratchy voice. A few had pleasant voices, but in my training there was never a focus on developing a successful choir. I was always a member of the choir, but I huddled behind the other baritones and mouthed the notes. After Mass and a short thanksgiving we headed down to breakfast, wolfishly hungry and thirsty too since at that time fasting from food and liquid from the midnight before was the rule. At seven-thirty the dining-room, or refectory, was packed not only with the thirty novices but also with the priests in charge, the lay brothers who did much of the manual work in and out of the house, and a large contingent of the juniors who were two years

“Elected Silence”

73

ahead and studying mainly the Latin and Greek classics. All told there were about a hundred of us ready to dig into the solid breakfast fare. If it wasn’t Lent nobody fasted, and even then many were under twenty-one, the starting age for fasting. Breakfast started off with oatmeal served in large aluminum basins placed on each table. Within the bounds of moderation, unlike Oliver Twist we could help ourselves to as many portions as we wanted, but two were considered respectable. On feast days corn flakes were laid on but I always preferred porridge. The main portion at least three mornings a week was johnnycake, a type of corn bread or polenta, served with butter and corn syrup, a large platter of which was placed on each table. It was delicious, steaming hot and discreetly looked forward to by all. If you were last at the table as the platter was passed round, you were supposed to get the largest piece, and perhaps since everybody was watching, it generally worked out in favour of the last man. There were also toast, coffee, and milk. After a short grace we piled our dishes on trolleys and headed back to our cubicles to make our beds and be ready for “Works.” Works began at 8:30. We lined up at the desk of the admonitor, who assigned us to various cleaning jobs in the house. The instructions were given in Latin, which even after seven years of Latin I found hard to grasp until I had studied the expressions on paper. “Would you like to sweep the first section of the main staircase, please” was, I believe, “Visne verrere primam partem magnae scalae, quaeso,” and if there were also dusting and mopping to be done, at least twice a week, “tergere” and “detergere” were gracefully added. I enjoyed the effort of the physical labour, which was not at all strenuous. The least attractive assignment was cleaning the toilets. You had to make sure no one was in the stalls, and once I caught an older father on the throne, much to his embarrassment. Because most of us had never done this sort of thing before in our lives, the results were less than perfect and, upon inspection, we often had to repeat our performance without a word of complaint. Every few months there were major Works when windows were cleaned and floors scrubbed. None of us minded, as we were freed for a day or two from the routine of the daily regimen or “Ordo”

74

The Greater Glory

as it was called. With no Windex or any other cleaner, the huge windows in the public rooms were all washed with rags and warm water, and then dried and polished with newspaper until they sparkled. No streaks were permitted, otherwise we had to start over. The floors, all soft wood, wide pine boards, were scrubbed on hands and knees and then waxed. It was a huge job, but the standards were not overly meticulous and the result was a clean and fresh-smelling house. For some unaccountable reason I was often dispatched to the tailor shop, as we called it, to help Brother Hinton. The tailor shop was located at the front of the old farm residence on the ground floor of the tower that rose three floors with the rest of the original dwelling. Brother Hinton had a speech impediment but neither that nor the rule of silence prevented him from carrying on in a spirited and voluble fashion. He was very kind to me and could see from my downcast manner and pursed lips that I could stand some cheering up. He stopped me from biting my nails, a terrible habit in retrospect, and he also taught me how to operate the mangle. Laundry was a sizeable item in the house of a hundred, and it was all done by the brothers using large machines, each person’s linen tied in a tiny bag. As the master and the new assistant rector or minister – unlike the old one, I was told – were insistent on cleanliness with novices and juniors, there was a huge pile each week. Everyone sorted and folded his own items except the sheets which, I think, were hung on lines in the basement to dry, but the dress shirts of the fathers and some other things like handkerchiefs had to be ironed. With a little coaching and a lot of joking from Brother Hinton, I became quite expert in manipulating the mangle. The handkerchiefs were simple enough, although even they had to be folded in a certain way, but the shirts, some rather ragged I noticed, followed a pattern of movements, first the collar, then the back, both sides of the front, and finally the sleeves and cuffs. When properly ironed and folded they could look almost professionally done, and although brother supervised me carefully at the beginning he soon trusted me to work on my own so that he could go back to his work of tailoring, patching, and making a cassock, which he could do in two days.

“Elected Silence”

75

I felt more useful ironing for the group than washing windows or raking leaves. A bell was rung and then on to the next half-hour of the daily Ordo. Weather permitting, it was reading out of doors from a famous spiritual manual by a seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit by the name of Rodriquez. Five days a week, Thursdays and Sundays excepted, we put on our hats and coats and read this extraordinary book while walking up and down the paths and sidewalks in the shadow of the house. “Rod,” as we called it, was divided into various topics such as humility, poverty, etc., but mainly consisted of innumerable anecdotes about the holy men and women of the early church, especially the Fathers of the Desert, that were intended to edify and spur its readers on to a higher perfection and a noble emulation. Rod was supposed to be taken seriously but the stories culled from the zealous hagiographers were often so preposterous that even our admiration was often strained. The result was that we all joked about them, one of the desert monks being so holy that he tamed a lioness (the only “she” about) that sat at his feet; another less pious one by the name of Arsenius was reprimanded for indulgently crossing first his ankles, then his knees; we were warned not to emulate him either with a “little Arsenius” or, God forbid, a “large Arsenius.” Our master of novices never crossed his legs either “little” or “large,” planting his large patched brogues flat on the pine floor, and sharp-eyed novices watched him carefully lest he should sadly fail. On the wall of our classroom, or ascetory, was a bulletin board (tabella) with all our names affixed to little pieces of wood. When you had to leave the room for one reason or another you had to place your name plug into the spot that indicated where you were to be for the next while: “in horto” was “in the garden”; “in triclinio” was “in the dining-room”; “in culina” was “in the kitchen”; “in praedio” was “down in the farm,” and so forth. Then there was “mox redibo,” meaning literally “I’ll be back soon.” But in fact it didn’t really mean that. We all soon learned that it was a code name for “I’m going to the bathroom.” We weren’t supposed to be looking at the board, but most did and everyone knew where everyone else was at all times.

76

The Greater Glory

It was still only 9:30 and we had been up since 5:30 a.m. – a major concession from the past year when it was 5 – but the jumping from pillar to post had just begun. The next move, I think, according to the Custom Book that had been taken holus-bolus from the French Canadian Jesuit novice regime, was Latin class, twice a week. The novices were permitted to allot only a very minimum time to academic studies, but I looked forward to the classes that were about the grade twelve level. It was all grammar and prose composition taken from “Bradley’s Arnold.” The idea was not to lose the Latin one had in the two-year respite from formal study and to prepare for the formal immersion into classical studies in what was known as the juniorate after vows were taken. The classes were conducted by a canny old Jesuit, an acute and interesting pedagogue. You could tell immediately that he knew his grammar cold because he could, if he chose, solve the most searching grammatical problems posed to him by many of the brighter novices, but often he would tease us and choose not to solve them, saying that all these little matters would be handled later in the juniorate one or two years hence, by which time they had all been long forgotten. He had been the minister of the house for twenty years, next to the rector in authority and in charge of running the house and getting the food on the table. With a hundred hungry mouths, at least sixty of whom were young men, it was a formidable task and responsibility. But over the years this old man had grown stingy, restricting the amount of milk that a young novice could consume to one glass per meal and permitting only two showers a week with the excuse of a shortage of hot water. What that meant for novices perspiring after vigorous games of touch football can only be imagined. Higher authorities were begged to have him changed, and he was eventually assigned to the posting where his heart lay: the farm and the sixty head of cattle he knew by name. He was replaced as minister by a thin, young Jesuit (quickly dubbed skinny-minny) who straightway threw out the old restrictions so that now we could take as many showers as we wanted, in the appointed times, of course, and drink a whole jug of milk if we chose. After all, there were at least thirty milking cows on the premises.

“Elected Silence”

77

The next morning session I recall was the Conference, conducted by the master of novices or his assistant, the socius, four times a week. This was important as it was the formal means for the master to explain and interpret the rules, constitutions, and culture of the Jesuit Order to his young charges. It was a demanding and delicate task and unfortunately, for all his good will and kindness, our master was just not up to his mandate. His explanations were literal and superficial, imparting little of the breadth and depth of the Jesuit history and spirit. He was not a learned man and was able to impart little even of what he had: “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.” The spirit behind the rules and constitutions was left concealed, and we only learned much later that the founder, St Ignatius, had never wanted to impose rules in the first place and only relented and wrote them because of pressure from his associates. The master focused on mortification and penance, literally interpreting, and so wildly misinterpreting, the rule of doing the harder thing in all matters. This proved to be duck soup for most of his eager and pliable listeners who quickly applied this general and very broad suggestion to their own lives, which resulted in many broken heads and bodies. In private the master was able in some cases to moderate the mania for mortification, but in other cases before he slowly became aware of it the damage had already been done and often irreparably so. Since he had little insight into the workings of the human spirit, in this delicate yet explosive matter, as in many others, he was hopelessly at sea when it came to dealing with human souls. He was undoubtedly a happy, holy man, but in directing zealous and sensitive young men he was too much the saint and too little the scholar and psychologist. At 11:45 was the examination of conscience. This was the first of two daily sessions of fifteen minutes duration in which we had to probe our consciences for any faults committed that morning, ask God’s forgiveness, and make amends. Fifteen minutes was a long time to examine a conscience given almost wholly to pious thoughts and deeds, but after scouring the skillet as to whether one had had uncharitable thoughts about Brother X when he accidentally but awkwardly bumped into you, you were to spend most

78

The Greater Glory

of the period, not thinking of the mid-day meal coming up but talking quietly and fervently to God. The exercise, since it was repeated at night, could be conducive to scrupulosity, and I had to be careful not to take that dastardly route, but I must say that one of the points the master insisted on was that a failure in observing the rules was not sinful – that the rules, not the vows of course, did not bind in terms of sin. This was sensible and theologically correct, and besides, quite a relief to delicate consciences that strove to follow the rules and carefully carry out whatever was down in black and white. Every one of us had a different approach to the way towards improving oneself, but I learned, perhaps a little late, the obvious rule that one always had to use good judgment. In general, the older novices were wiser in judgment and tended to make judgments with a broader view. They were no less fervent than the younger novices, but their experience usually helped them not to go overboard. Lunch was at twelve and was the main meal of the day. It started off with soup served in aluminum bowls brought by the servers who alternated each week between the novices and juniors. The mechanics of serving had to be learned, and the system was efficient and speedy, each server having two tables to attend to, although he could be summoned by any table for second helpings. The soup tureens and bowls were cleared away and the meat and vegetables were rolled out, steaming on huge carts. The head table was served first and we waited for the rector to give the signal for us to begin. Except for the clatter of dishes there was silence until the reading started. The first reading was several verses from scripture in Latin, and then on to a book chosen with care by the prefect of reading, not necessarily a life of a saint but often a wellwritten biography of interest to the different tastes of the group. Maisie Ward’s biography of Chesterton was a choice I recall. The reader had to be well prepared and was subjected to the corrections of the reading prefect, who hurled his orders from his place at the head table to the pulpit at the other end. The prefect would yell out, “Repetat,” that is, “let him repeat.” You couldn’t be sure what the correction should be, but generally it was in the phrasing of the sentence rather than in the pronunciation, which

“Elected Silence”

79

would have been carefully checked beforehand by all readers. Occasionally a different pronunciation between the English and American usage would arise, for example, “tomato” or “lieutenant.” Though most were used to the American, the English usage was always demanded. There was no microphone amid the clang of the plates and cutlery, the purpose being that the reader, a future preacher in a large church, should learn early to enlarge and project his voice and so be heard and understood by his listeners. Our prefect was a gruff, stern man who demanded perfection and was especially intolerant of mispronunciations and poor phrasing. It was always a nerve-wracking experience. After an ordeal of twenty minutes the first reader was replaced by another for the rest of the meal, and that was harder because you had to wait for your turn in the raised lectern. Once it was over you were drowning in perspiration and not really hungry for your meal at “second table.” Later the loud voice corrections were partially eased by the insertion of a light on the lectern that flashed when the prefect pounced on a mistake. Even a light suddenly blinking in your eye was upsetting when you weren’t sure just exactly where or what the error was, but it was easier on the listeners and the prefect if not the reader. The idea of projecting one’s voice correctly and articulately in a modulated and pleasing manner is a wonderful asset that few of us fully attained, but despite the demanding manner in which it was carried out I was grateful for the training that would prove so valuable later in the pulpit as well as the classroom. There was always a dessert, usually deep-apple pie, apple-brownbetty, or some other delicious concoction made from our large and varied apple orchard. Occasionally the master allowed us to forego our share, especially in Lent, but he was wise in supervising and not scrimping on our diet and intake. Tea and milk were also there in abundance. At the end of the meal the rector would call for the reading of the Martyrology, a daily summary mainly of the final hours of the Christian martyrs of the early Church who died for their faith on that day. They were short but vivid, and at times gruesome, their intention being to edify and inspire, but their repetition year after year tended to have a neutralizing effect,

80

The Greater Glory

although in the end perhaps a positive one by dint of their accumulation. All this time the priests and the juniors wore their birettas throughout the meal. The biretta was a black three-winged hat worn by priests and clerics throughout the ages, and in Europe was a helpful addition in the draughty and unheated halls, dining rooms, and churches. After the Martyrology the rector removed his biretta, was the first to stand, and then a thanksgiving grace was said by the minister. It was much shorter, “Agimus tibi gratias etc.,” than the pre-meal grace which contained responsorial snippets from scripture like “Et tu das escam illorum in tempore opportuno,” “And thou givest them their morsel when they need it.” With that the rector marched out first, followed by the master of novices and the other priests, then came the juniors, hatted in their new birettas – you had to be careful to wipe any crumbs on your napkin for fear of soiling the right wing, which was the one used for putting on and taking off the biretta – and then the novices, with eyes cast down, although it was amazing how much you could see even then, and finally the brothers, about a dozen of them, all heading for a short visit to the chapel. We next clapped on our coats in the cloak-room, everyone still in silence, and then out into the blessed fresh air where we formed groups of three, and after the invocation “Laudetur Jesus Christus,” “May Jesus Christ be praised” by the senior man of the “band,” a loud roar erupted and for the first time that day except for required instructions and replies we were permitted to talk. It was a wonderful concatenation of sounds, and though most of the conversation was trivial it was explosive and full of laughs, almost giddiness. There existed a list of topics you were supposed to confine yourself to, the novitiate, the Jesuit Order, the Church and some few others I have forgotten, but the topics were clearly restricted and family, current world affairs, and, above all, women were neatly excluded. In any case there was no access to the outside world, no radio – this was five years before tv – no newspapers, no magazines. If any momentous event occurred the master could, but often would not, inform the novices cryptically and without comment and if it was a disaster he would ask us to pray for the victims. Being sealed-

“Elected Silence”

81

off from the world lasted right through the marathon Jesuit training except for certain respites later on, but in these early years we were sealed as air-tight as possible. In groups of three the novices made their way to the “racetrack,” an ample oval path in the garden set aside for their daily constitutionals. I’m not sure whether the movement was counterclockwise, like regular horse tracks, but it was almost as speedy and vigorous. We were broken into random groups, or bands, of three for efficiency’s sake but also to avoid any possibility of a private exchange of thoughts and above all feelings between two novices. The saying was “numquam duo, semper tres,” that is, “never two, always three.” The idea was not to get too close to anyone and to be equally kind and friendly to all, but not too friendly. I thought the rule silly at the time, and later we were given a talk by the master on what was called “particular friendships,” that is, being emotionally attracted to and, “Quod Deus avertat,” “May God avert such a thing,” emotionally involved with another novice. There was some merit in the precaution as the living was close, the emotional atmosphere highly charged, and as time went by competition, rivalry, and especially the absence of the humanizing influence of family and women accentuated the loneliness and the sterility of the ambience. Our master wisely did not make a big point about it and spoke about it only once, but that regulation and others were always there and hovered over us. While it might have prevented exclusive cliques and above all love trysts, which were forbidden to us as Christian clerics, it certainly militated against the forming of solid male friendships, a serious flaw in the lives of Jesuits that I observed over the years. Then and later, it was the group, the Order, that counted most, the individual less so unless he was ill. We pranced around the racetrack in high spirits and in all weathers, letting off steam and exchanging inanities for about an hour. At 1.25 the “benedicta” bell was rung, a short prayer to Mary was said, and at 1:30 silence again reigned. In very bad weather we stayed inside in one of the classrooms or when it rained heavily in a large covered cedar kiosk with wooden seats around the sides. These were the few occasions when we all faced one another and

82

The Greater Glory

were allowed and encouraged to talk. The interchange among thirty men of varying ages and interests was a sharp contrast to the limited conversation in the bands. Here the more outgoing, the more eloquent, and usually the older ones took over, some with great wit and humour. It was harder for the quieter ones to get a word or two in – I was in that category – but it was expected that everyone join in as best he could. The most articulate and wittiest novices were those from Loyola College in Montreal. They had been well trained in drama and debating in their years with the Jesuits and could stand before a group in full confidence and tell inoffensive jokes – “piis auribus non offensivum,” that is, “acceptable to honest ears” – and entertain the group the entire hour. In an unguarded but hilarious moment one of the younger ones described his sister or a girl he claimed to be his sister, as a million-dollar baby. There was a spontaneous shout of laughter, and the quite innocent remark, although a bit surprising at the time, made a quiet round for the next few weeks. The Loyola group usually formed a large part of the novices, generally at least a third. They could all speak well, were very well grounded in Latin and Greek, both indispensable at that time, and above all they had been associated with Jesuits all through their teen-age years and almost knew what to expect. They seemed to be able to exercise better judgment in the ways of the spirit, having undergone many spiritual retreats during their school years, and tended not to take spiritual injunctions as literally as some of us others who were hearing them for the first time. The next large contingent came from the Jesuit colleges in the West, either Winnipeg or Regina. This was a varied group, more restrained, and considered as kind of “hayseeds”; then there were several from the Jesuit college in Halifax and a number of clever and interesting fellows from Toronto and other cities of Ontario. There were always a few from Prince Edward Island, solid and talking, as it sounded to unpractised ears, kind of funny. The rest formed a disparate smattering from the far West and the U.S, all of whom were considered a bit “extra chorum” and had to make their mark to be accepted. This lack of acceptance was undercover, but as the competition and rivalries came to the surface over time,

“Elected Silence”

83

the superiority of the Loyola group became an important factor in shaping the group. The afternoon began, as I recall, with spiritual reading, either the life of Christ or the lives of the saints. There was no rest period, so the reading period in the hot ascetory tended to be somnolent. To keep awake you could stand up and read, but it was considered rather singular. The library was well stocked with spiritual reading, and the favourite lives, like Archbishop Goodier’s, made the rounds. Much later I lived in the same house as Archbishop Goodier for a month or two at the Jesuit house on Farm Street in London. He was a remarkable man, retired by then, who had been the Roman Catholic bishop of Bombay and was full of anecdotes about his long ecclesiastical career. I recall one concerning a young student at Stonyhurst, the Jesuit college in northern England, who was sent out of class by the class master for not having the proper book. As he was wandering in tears about the campus he ran into a Jesuit scholastic – that is, a young Jesuit in studies and not yet ordained – who stopped him and asked him what his problem was. The scholastic sympathized, but observing that his sympathy wasn’t having the desired effect, tucked up his cassock and shinnied up a nearby flagpole, right to the very top. The boy watched in amazement and stopped his tears. The young scholastic who displayed such ingenious and idiosyncratic charity was Gerard Manley Hopkins. Another drill in the long day was the memory period already mentioned. Once you were ready in a short, prescribed time you had to recite the biblical text to the chap at the next desk, and then he would repeat his version to you. It was brute memory, in Latin of course, but at that age most did not find it an insuperable task. There was also, as I have said, fifteen minutes of “The Imitation of Christ,” that moving but dangerous little fifteenth century tract. At 3:30 we had collation, a coffee and plain bread. There was milk too, and although rather Spartan, we all had two or three slices of unadorned bread. The coffee was the same brew as breakfast’s, kept on the continual boil on the huge kitchen range to bring out all noxious ingredients of the coffee. I soon stopped taking it and clung to fresh milk. You were allowed to put sugar

84

The Greater Glory

and bread in your milk and spoon out what was known as pap. Another bell rang for further spiritual reading from which you could make jottings or “lights” in your notebook; to save space the handwriting of many became more and more minuscule. Later, we sat down again at our desks to prepare for the second meditation of the day, this time in the chapel. Often it would consist of a continuation of the early morning’s thoughts and prayers, and by this time we would all be quite alert. It was a peaceful and moving time in the late afternoon, just before the final meal. Usually there was a little breeze coming in through the open windows and in the summer the sound of the birds in the garden below contributed to a cheerful mood. The evening meal was quite simple, meat and one vegetable and a dessert of the invariable apple sauce, but the latter was delicious since it was a different batch and a different brand of apple each night. I don’t know anyone who tired of it, and it was marvelous for the digestion as well. There was reading throughout the meal, usually a second book chosen with care, and the meal ended with the reading of the menology, a short biographical sketch of wellknown Jesuits from England. Most of the older Canadians had taken part of their studies there at the old Heythrop College in Oxfordshire, the former estate of Lord Brassey that suitably included a short golf course. Most of the Canadians had fond memories of their stay there, and some learned to strike a good golf shot. At the evening meal, especially if there was a visitor, occasionally the rector would permit talking by calling out “Deo Gratias,” and the whole refectory would erupt into conversation, not always with the desired modulation. Usually the “Deo gratias” was given at the main meal at noon, and that too was a suitable occasion to release pent-up thoughts and feelings. It was outside again for evening recreation, whatever the weather, and bands of three were again formed to go around the racetrack. The evening recreation was shorter, and the only memorable part that I recall was the last fifteen minutes, “ultimus quadrans,” devoted to conversing in Latin. Even those of us who had had many years of university Latin were completely at sea with the words for potatoes, hedge, strawberry, etc., which usually

“Elected Silence”

85

formed the chit-chat, with the result that the elements, moon, clouds, rain, and snow were often artificially invoked. But it was good practice in getting out the right verb and case endings. At 7:45 we went in for Litanies, when all the community assembled in the chapel for fifteen minutes to recite the Litanies of the Saints, in Latin of course, and despatched at an astonishing speed. A different priest would be assigned to recite them, and I soon got to love the flow and cadence of those beautiful prayers. At eight another bell rang for a bit of free time, some reading, and then another fifteen minutes for the examination of conscience and a final fifteen for the preparation of “points” for the next morning’s meditation. All these last exercises were carried out at one’s desk in the ascetory together with all the other novices. You wouldn’t think that there would be much to examine in the eight hour interval from the last “examen,” but with practice and meticulous searching much seemed to come to light, mostly in the area of charity, that most perfect and elusive of virtues. Once or twice a week during the noon examen period a monastic practice occurred that most of us never liked and never got used to. The admonitor, the head novice, with notebook in hand, would walk backwards from desk to desk, bending over and whispering, asking whether any of us had to report any fault of another novice. The motive behind it, no doubt, was to improve one’s behaviour and make life easier for all, but I always found reporting on another odious and, in this open forum, nerve-wracking. Although everyone was presumably absorbed in prayer, nevertheless there was no one who did not observe each slow backward step – why backwards, I’m not sure – and especially the secretive jotting down of some fault or error of someone, unknown for the moment. It could be me and if there were only a few jottings then we would all know who gave the “admonition,” and a minute later when the head novice went round, backwards again, to administer the report of the fault to the defaulter, everyone also knew who received the admonition. If there were many jottings, then you couldn’t tell who gave what to whom, not that you wanted to know anyway, but if there were only one or two, everyone knew who gave it and who received it. Fortunately, the master insisted that this reporting

86

The Greater Glory

was to be restricted only to external and non-moral faults, but the whole process, which included many other public and non-public sleuthing, was, in retrospect, unpleasant and demeaning. After the preparation for the morning meditation or points was finished at 9:15 we were off to bed and “Sacred Silence” had begun. During this period, which lasted until after breakfast next morning, there was to be no talking whatsoever or even communication unless under dire necessity. It was part of the whole process of keeping God in your thoughts and before you, especially during the night and next morning’s prayers and celebration of the Eucharist. It was a monastic practice that was observed in most religious orders and congregations, but even in the day, outside of recreation time, silence was to be observed and one’s thoughts were to be given over to “recollection,” that is, a focus of one’s mind away from things of the world and towards the matters of the spirit. In a monastic setting this made sense, since that was the primary purpose of the enclosed orders of the Church and it also made sense in the monastic setting of the Jesuit novitiate: it was supposed to help prepare for later in a Jesuit’s busy schedule, to bring him back to the basic purpose and motivation of his life. Tuesday and Sunday afternoons were free for sports and walks on the property. I looked forward ardently to playing anything that was offered. In the dry season we got out onto one of the back fields, past the bee hives, and played an intense game of touch football. You weren’t supposed to slap but merely touch the back of the ball carrier but it was almost always a slap or a wallop. Competition was keen and rivalries came out at times; you had to be certain to place the ball down in the exact spot where the play ended. Running like hares for two hours was a good tonic for twenty-year-olds cooped up at close quarters, and I felt sorry for those who cringed on the sidelines and didn’t share the enthusiasm of us who played. After breakfast on Thursdays we were free until five. At first we would walk along the roads, in two’s this time to prevent fatalities, and end up at an old and wonderful rambling summerhouse on the edge of a river at the far end of our farm. It was called the “villa” and was to be the scene of many joyful times during those

“Elected Silence”

87

two novitiate years. After lunch we would play ball, go for another walk, or often swim in our pond or in the river itself. Swimming in the river I enjoyed the most. We would go in as soon as the ice was gone in the spring and in the very early spring we would ride the ice flows downstream, something the master would not have liked to hear about. In late June we would spend two weeks there, and would talk about it for weeks ahead. We were allowed to listen to classical music at certain times, and I can still hear the strains of Mendelssohn’s Italian Concerto in my ears sixty year later. It all sounds idyllic and it was, but during this time of relative relaxing all the spiritual activities were performed and above all a tight rein on one’s thoughts and feelings was always exercised. It was difficult and a bit confusing trying to balance relaxation with penance, but it was a salutary lesson that we should have had more of even at that time. We wrote a letter home every two weeks and I was quite surprised to hear that before going out the letters were read or censored by the master or his assistant. This system lasted right through the long fourteen-year course of training, not that every letter was perused but it could be and sometimes was. It implied mistrust and a suspicion of lack of judgment in the writer, odious on both counts. The purpose was made clear but it was certainly not merely to correct grammatical and spelling mistakes. Perhaps we might complain or describe an event that could be misinterpreted by anxious mothers or fathers, but in my case I didn’t feel any constraint in writing the bi-weekly letter home. My mother always, and occasionally my father, would write back immediately and very wittily too about home events. There were other priests in the house besides the rector, the master of novices, and his assistant. There were three or four professors who taught Latin, Greek, English, and French in the juniorate wing nearby. You weren’t supposed to talk with them except to say hello on the paths or go to confession to if you wished. The dean was also the prefect of reading, a grumpy, severe man who had to be consulted if you were reading that week. There were set times you were supposed to see him, and often when rapping at his door you could hear a slight rustling inside before he answered

88

The Greater Glory

and upon entering you could smell and see smoke curling from the drawer of his desk. He was pleasant enough in private but a terror in public. Some of the other priests in residence were on the mission band, that is, traveling preachers who gave missions and retreats in parishes and schools across the country. They were quite a relaxed group, kind of free-lancers, which added a bit of fresh air to the house. Sometimes they would give talks to the novices that were always interesting and often dramatic as some of them were excellent orators. They would smile at us while recuperating their strength, and then silently they would be off to some distant place. They didn’t pay any attention to the rule of “Grades,” that is not communicating with novices or juniors unless permission was given, but when they were in the house they spoke and chatted with us without restraint whenever they ran into us. Grades was a system in the Jesuit Order whereby those engaged in various stages of the training were separated from those in another activity and not allowed to communicate with them without permission. Thus the novices were forbidden to talk with the juniors, the fathers, or the brothers and that applied in reverse. The purpose was, it seems, to focus solely on what was your present state and duty and not to bother with another so-called state until you actually came into it. At special and definite times, however, for example on Feast Days, we were permitted to talk with the juniors for a half-hour or so. This was called “fusion” and it was amazing how much the juniors knew about each one of us novices. Their life too was monumentally restricted, and they had little to talk about except the inhabitants of the house. But I found it interesting meeting face to face and talking with those whom I had seen and not spoken to countless times that very day in refectory and chapel; they were a step up and beyond us and knew more ropes than we did, and most of them seemed to be happy, though I later found that judgment premature. What I liked best, though, were the fusion games, novices against juniors either in hockey or football. They were all hard-fought, but the juniors generally won as they were older and had some wonderful and superior athletes among them. These separating regulations were called Grades, but the real Grades in the Jesuits were something quite different and were the

“Elected Silence”

89

cause of much opposition by the popes and other religious groups in the early days of the Society of Jesus, the true and full title of the Jesuits. Everybody took vows, brothers, scholastics, and priests, but there were two kinds of vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and they were considered either as simple vows or solemn, the former pronounced by all after two years of novitiate, and the latter taken by only a smaller and you might say a more select group called the “professed” after twenty-one years. Though the first vows after two years were perpetual, that is, permanent and forever, everyone also took final vows, but most pronounced what were called “simple” vows, while the “professed” took solemn vows. The difference between “simple” or “solemn” vows was only the manner in which they were looked upon, the solemn being considered more binding and more difficult to be dispensed from, the simple still binding but legally easier to be dispensed from. A vow, of course, is a vow, whatever its kind, and it means a promise to God to do what one considers better than its opposite in a serious and noble matter. A vow to search for gold, being a trivial and mundane matter, is not a vow in the religious sense. All the brothers and about two thirds of the priests in the Jesuits took their final three simple vows after many years, while the other third of the priests pronounced solemn vows after twenty-one years. These were not only the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but also a special fourth vow to the pope to go without demur on any mission he might prescribe. They also made two simple vows: not to become bishops unless ordered by the pope, and not to make the poverty of the Order easier. Thus, even though all took vows and all were full-fledged members of the Order, there were two groups or what were known as two Grades in the Order: the “professed” of four solemn vows on the one hand, and the “non-professed” or spiritual coadjutors (priests) and temporal coadjutors (brothers) on the other. The professed alone elected the head of the Order, called the general, and they alone could depose him. Though the distinction between the two groups or grades was never spoken of among the members of the Order, there was always an undercurrent and a realization of who belonged to which.

90

The Greater Glory

There were other Jesuit priests residing with us. One was the gruff old chaplain of the Guelph Reformatory. He would take the juniors with him on Sundays to help out, and also on other days to teach, or rather try to teach, catechism or Catholic doctrine to the inmates. Father Dunn would stand for no nonsense from the prisoners, but the meeker juniors had a rough time of it, with bolts and nails being hurled at them, even with the guards present, while they wrote on the blackboard. Father Dunn was quite intolerant of the other chaplains and accused one of them to his face of “purloining his hymnbooks. Yes, purloined, they were.” He was also chaplain to a convent of nuns, and once when hearing their confessions he got locked in the confessional box. From the dark recesses of the confessional he was heard to yell out, “Will one of you girls bale me out?” The sisters used to serve him breakfast after Mass, and one morning during Lent, when giving up small pleasures was called for, he was heard to complain: “Sister, I’ve done enough penance in my days: give me a cigarette.” Another group of priests and brothers were those confined to the infirmary. They were treated with great care, with the exquisite charity that St Ignatius had always insisted upon with the sick. We were allowed to visit them at times and bring them their meals. Some were perfectly lucid and had much to tell about their experiences, especially the missionaries from northern Ontario; others were completely broken down and would shout at us and the brother in charge. We could hear one of the old missionaries who was in his dotage shouting from his bed, “Je veux shier.” With the aged and sick there were many funerals during my days in Guelph. As well, any English Jesuit dying in Ontario and Quebec would be buried there in the pleasant cemetery just below the main house. The cemetery was surrounded by cedar hedges and carefully maintained, with the grass cut and a few surrounding flowers. By my time there were at least fifty graves of Canadian Jesuits, and each month or so there was an addition, with the somber procession from the chapel and the solemn prayers at the grave site. At one point I was assigned to look after the cemetery, and during my short tenure as grave curator the heavens opened up and poured rain day after day until the ground around the

“Elected Silence”

91

gravestones became soaked. However, I doggedly carried on with my job of clipping and raking. One day while I was working on the soggy grass on top of a grave that was about ten years old, I noticed a rather deep depression on one side and moved over to explore. Suddenly my right leg seemed to give way, but in fact it had plunged through the soft turf right up to my hip. I was down on my hands and knees by this time and luckily was able to pull myself up. I tried to crawl away and down went the other leg, full length, into another spot. By this time I was expecting to go down full-bodied to greet the corpse, but finally I was able to ease my way slowly to firmer ground, get up, drop my clippers, and head towards the house. What my boots touched down there I never went back to explore. Another quite remarkable group of Jesuits that lived with us were the lay brothers. There were about a dozen of them, and they virtually ran the whole show, house, kitchen, and farm. They took the three vows and were full-fledged Jesuits but they did not proceed to the priesthood. Some were very well qualified as bookkeepers, accountants, and nurses and most entered with a high school education, though a few had some years of college. The ones I knew could perform any conceivable task that was assigned to them by the Father Minister who was in charge of them. One extraordinary man was the brother in charge of the orchards, Brother Reischman, an American from the mid-west whose wife had died early in his marriage. His pride and joy were his apple trees. After careful instruction we novices were permitted to help pick the apples in the fall, climbing up ladders and onto the crotches, holding on with one hand and plucking with the other, but we were permitted to eat only the apples that had fallen to the ground. With our clumsy moving about on the branches, it just happened that many apples were more or less accidentally knocked off. The Agricultural College in nearby Guelph, now the University of Guelph, consulted Brother Reischman often. Another outstanding brother was Brother Hévey, the gardener. He planted enough vegetables to last for months, and after a small canning machine was donated by the father of one of the novices he had supplies for the entire year. We were glad to help with the

92

The Greater Glory

strawberries, raspberries, beans, and peas when the time came as it got us away from the house and ordo. We weren’t allowed to talk except when necessary, but there was communication, especially when sitting down and shelling the peas. Brother Kline was in charge of the kitchen, a monumental job, and he ran the infirmary as well. The retired brothers were there too, Brother Rowell, a trickster, and diminutive and wizened Brother Roach, who had broken down in body and spirit many years before and spent his days pushing his wheelbarrow about to no purpose and setting aside at meals little tidbits of food for his guardian angel. The large cattle and grain farm was handled by another group of fine brothers, notably the two Brady brothers. In the thirties and forties when income was low the produce from the farm was indispensable for the feeding of a hundred hungry men. The most important activity of the entire two-year novitiate period was the Long Retreat that began at the end of September and lasted a full month. By that time all the novices for that year were in residence; when we started, there were twenty-six of us in all, including the novice brothers. What we were about to begin was known as the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and has, over the centuries, been probably the most powerful and effective force for spiritual reformation, apart from the New Testament, in the history of Christianity. Knowing even a little about its history and import, all of us looked forward to the experience with interest but mainly with awe and trepidation. This spiritual manual was composed by Ignatius himself almost 500 years ago, and he divided his short text into four sections or weeks. The first week is called the Principle and Foundation and deals with the purpose of one’s life, “to praise, reverence, and serve God,” sin, hell, and our redemption by Jesus Christ. The Principle and Foundation is solid and substantial, but it says little about the happiness and fulfillment of the person going through the retreat, though no doubt these are implied, especially a little later in the important instruction that all things in the world, both material and spiritual, are to be used insofar as they help towards the praise and service of God and to be put aside if they don’t. The first week, in fact, generally lasted about eight days, depending on the

“Elected Silence”

93

mentality of the individual, but it could last fifteen or more days if the retreatant had difficulty in accepting the first principles. He would not be allowed to go on to the second week unless he accepted and believed all that he was obliged to go through in that period. There is no doubt that the first week is the toughest of the four. It not only deals with accepting the purpose or end of humankind but also with one’s personal life and the sins and misdemeanors one has committed in the past, placed in the context of a grim and lurid depiction of hell. The latter can be very frightening, especially for a sensitive and imaginative soul, and it requires the guidance and support of a perceptive and intelligent spiritual director. Otherwise, melancholy, confusion, and despair can easily take place. Fortunately, “hell” is followed by the consoling presence of Christ as the loving and merciful redeemer, but before that the grim parade of one’s sins, small or great, as well as the hissing fires of hell have to be dwelt on in full view. I had read the “graphics” of Milton and the hell sermon of Joyce’s Portrait of a Young Man and needed little prodding of the imagination. Our retreat master, the master of novices, was really not very helpful. He had a large group, he was fairly new in his role, and although he did warn us not to dwell unduly on our own sins or the luridness of hell’s fires, he was, sad to say, quite unable to perceive the precise impact that these contemplations had on so many of us. He had neither the time nor the perspicacity to guide fervent twenty-year-olds over the shoals. But the first week did end. The ordeal terminated after eight days, and we were wonderfully surprised to learn that we had a break day, no intense scrutiny or contemplation until five that evening when the second week began. We were free and, almost ecstatic, roamed the countryside on our huge property, in bands, of course, although not allowed, if I recall, to play touch football. We really hadn’t forgotten to speak after eight days of silence, and the conversation was loud, rapid, and incessant. We were permitted to go for a swim, as I recall. The weather was perfect and remained so all through October until the end of the retreat. The second week was devoted mainly to the contemplation of the life of Christ, from his birth right up to the end of his public

94

The Greater Glory

life. It was easier and much more pleasant, the main theme being reflecting on Christ and the emulation of his spirit and virtues. The two most important meditations of this week were what are known as the “Kingdom” and the “Two Standards.” Both are powerful and very emotional. The Kingdom treats a double call, first from a noble king to follow him in whatever he might command and wherever he might lead, and the second from Christ, also depicted as a king. If you would be moved to follow the first, then, a fortiori, since Christ’s call and mission are so much nobler, you would be moved to follow Him that much more eagerly and fervently. Properly handled it is a psychological and spiritual tour de force. It is St Ignatius’ most brilliant creation. The second great meditation is the “Two Standards,” which depicts a huge plain with the standard of Christ and his army in light and glory at one end and the standard of Satan and his minions in clamour and confusion at the other. This is also a brilliant and effective creation, but not, in my opinion and experience as powerful as the Kingdom. The only thing I could possibly quibble about in the Kingdom was that in our democratic world the notion of following a noble king or a great leader is rather remote from our way of thinking, as is Christ’s call to convert the infidel, a notion that is not exactly politically acceptable in these days. But in both I was strongly inspired to follow Christ wherever He might call me to serve. The second week was long, but it too was followed by a break day that was enjoyed to the full with tramping about and having lunch away from the house. The Passion of Christ was the subject of the third week. We were warned again not to become too lugubrious but it was hard to fasten on Christ’s sufferings for five or six days without becoming emotionally involved in an intense way. As I recall, there was no break day between the third and fourth week, which was devoted to the Resurrection of Christ. It was, of course, a joyful week, not less so with the realization that everything would be over in a few days. The climax of this final week was a rather extraordinary meditation called “To obtain divine love.” It consisted of cataloguing all the gifts and benefits that God has bestowed on us over the years and one would have to be an arrant ingrate not to

“Elected Silence”

95

be deeply moved by this imaginative display of gifts spread across the horizon. It was a fitting climax to these spiritual exercises that truly exercised us in every way, in mind, body, and spirit. There were many lows and some highs, but overall it proved to be, as it was meant to be, an indelible experience that contained a blueprint for the complete reformation and re-orientation of one’s life. Where that re-orientation led was partially contained in a series of resolutions made during that final week. I believe that the master had to approve them, which was a safeguard against their being on the plane of the unattainable and preposterous. In any case, in the following months they were tested and readjusted in the quiet tenor of novitiate life. It was quiet but it was intense. The external life itself resembled a kind of army boot camp that was easy enough and to be expected. Running here, running there, deprived of this, deprived of that was simple, but it was the internalization of all these rules, regulations, resolutions that became the problem. The constant, incessant turning over in our minds of these injunctions, these exhortations to perfection, to do better, to be holy, came from within, from inside, and was quite different from a drill sergeant yelling at us. The drill sergeant was really me yelling at myself to do better, to be perfect, and above all to do more penance. I was, deep down, bad, bone bad, and penance and more penance would change and repair the mess. The library was crammed with books that gloried in the extravagant penances of the saints and the holy, even contemporaries like the Irishman Fr Willy Doyle, who took to running into the bramble bushes in undress for self-flagellation. Not that you would do anything so silly, and we used to joke about him, but you were tempted to try something similar, something that was personal, something that hurt. This was reinforced by the rule in the Jesuit Constitutions that one should choose to do the harder thing, all things being equal, but it was not easy to decide if and when all things were equal, and if you chose the easier road, you were giving in to yourself, being soft on yourself. Not doing the harder thing made you feel guilty and eventually depressed: you were really not trying to do your best. The result was a kind of brainwashing, not like the Moonies or the drill sergeants or even the wild ways of

96

The Greater Glory

the modern right-wing Catholic fundamentalists, but it was an internal brain-washing, with no one to blame but yourself and the system that let it slip by. Sadly, a trip to the master with these problems didn’t help much: his favourite expression when I – a grown man of twenty-one – summoned courage to complain about these conundrums, was to laugh and reply, “Well, Brother, it’s got to be hard.” It was not that he was a harsh man by any means, but to lessen or perhaps even solve the problem he chose to make light of it. He didn’t really seem to grasp the devastating impact and damage these general spiritual exhortations could have on the psyches of his charges. We novices did not and could not expect an all-wise, all-perceptive master, much less a New York psychiatrist, to solve all our dilemmas and hold our hands, but most of us needed more than we got. He did his best, but his best was not enough. In the early days of the retreat we were all shocked, at least most of us were, when the master in conference introduced us to the whip. It was called a discipline and was made of knotted cords about two feet long. The master again made light of it but said that we were to beat our bare backs with it twice a week in the privacy of our cubicle for the duration of a Hail Mary sung out by the senior man in the dormitory. I was dumbfounded, thinking that such practices had been carried out by the monks in medieval times and long since had gone the way of the dodo bird. The discipline was not to draw blood but only to bruise and leave temporary welts. It was painful but it was all offered up as suitable penance against our sinful natures. The little group in my hearing was mercifully benefited by a short Hail Mary rapidly uttered by a charitable fellow novice. Also in store for our mortification was the chain, a band of chicken wire sharpened on the inside and worn around the ankle. That too was a twice-weekly performance, from rising until after breakfast, some two hours later. By then some were hobbling back to their cubicles to undo their little manacles. At times, everyone was so wound up that after lights out at 9:30 we would often break into giddy and almost hysterical laughter, indicative of how high-strung we were. We all bowed our

“Elected Silence”

97

heads and conformed to the penances, but I doubt that many of us approved or agreed to their suitability in the twentieth century. Another activity in our two-year preparatory period that was more interesting and seemed to be more obviously in keeping with the external thrust of the Order that Ignatius originally had in mind was a series of tests or “trials” as they were known. They were usually conducted well beyond the confines of the house and therefore very welcome to those of us who always felt cooped up and anxious to get away from the daily routine. The first was the catechism trial, which called for hiking out once a week by foot to the small rural schools in the general area and instructing the Catholic children in the elements of their religion. Most schools were at least five miles each way, some much farther, but we didn’t mind. We’d get started right after lunch in rain or shine and head out, two by two. The kids seemed happy to receive us and though only mildly interested in what we had to teach them, they were glad to see a new face, and even the teachers got a little break from their routine. Most of the schools were one-room affairs, some poorly heated, with all the children from grades one to eight piled in at their double desks. These one-room schools are long since gone, but I believe that in some, perhaps most, the teaching was adequate. The students learned to work on their own early on after being told what to do and how to do it and thus were saved from the hovering, pestering, and nagging, not to say the droning, voices of many teachers in multi-room schools. I knew many of these children who went on to university and the professions. The catechism trial was a long trek for us in the winter, but I must say that the master made sure that only the more robust took on the longer routes. Another getting-out-and-away experience was the hospital trial. Arrangements were made by the master for one or more of us to help out every day in a hospital in the nearby city. Since the hospital was run by nuns, they seemed pleased to have us and knew what to expect from complete greenhorns. We were to be a kind of orderly and do anything that was required, even to carrying away bedpans. By my time the trial consisted of helping out

98

The Greater Glory

at the senior home, also run by the nuns. There was no cleaning up that I recall but most of the long hours were spent talking with the male seniors in their large common room. Although the room was gloomy and charged with a heavy disinfectant, I found the men receptive and quite interesting. Most were retired farmers from the district who had no one to care for them at home, and they loved to play checkers or cards, euchre to be precise. They would get a great glint in their eyes as they rapped the table with their knuckles and slammed down the card when they “euchred” you. There was one duo that didn’t play, the Fitzpatrick brothers. One sat bolt upright in his chair, and the other lay flat on the bench, and in order to distinguish them apart, we knew one as “vertical Fitzpatrick” and the other as “horizontal Fitzpatrick.” Since they were rather monosyllabic in their conversations, we had to take the initiative and keep up a steady drum of questioning. That went for most of the others as well, but they were a solid bunch of men and taught us a good deal about many of the problems in agriculture. This experiment also went on for a month, and just when we got to know the inmates well the trial was over and we were back at our daily routine. A third experiment was the “mission trial.” This brought us away from the house for a month and consisted of hiking on the highway along with a companion to help out one of the pastors in a distant parish, perhaps hundreds of miles away. By my time, wandering along highways that in the late forties were increasingly more clogged had proved impracticable, so a substitute was found in sending all the novices for two weeks to the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario. Our job was mainly to open the shrine and prepare for the influx of summer pilgrims. We worked hard in cleaning the church and weeding the flowerbeds of the beautiful site where the early Jesuit missionaries had laboured and many had died for their faith at the hands of the Iroquois. It was a wonderful experience. Each night we had a talk on the martyrs by the director, Fr Lally, who was so absorbed in his work that he always measured distances, however far away, in terms of how many miles from the shrine any place might be. We also ate well as the director, a saintly yet practical man, was grateful for our voluntary

“Elected Silence”

99

labour and made sure that his kitchen crew prepared hearty and delicious meals for his novice visitors. Once back at the novitiate in Guelph we again set ourselves seriously on the narrow and rocky road to what was held up before us, a life of perfection. One of the main means towards that misty goal, as I have mentioned, was the maintaining of a spirit of “recollection.” Nobody I knew every quite attained it except perhaps Fr Lally and a saintly brother in the kitchen, but it was presented as an ideal to us who were like race horses, eager and responsive to any suggestion of the master’s. An important method to attain this recollection cocoon was a quaint and extraordinary rule written by Ignatius – what was known as “modesty of the eyes.” When not absorbed in some other duty, we were all supposed to keep our eyes under strict control, as they were the mirrors of the soul. This consisted in bending the head slightly forward and looking down into the middle distance, turning neither left or right, nor, of course, upwards. Whether we were in the house, out of the house, on the highway, or in the city, we were to preserve this dignified posture and control. Rather than giving the appearance of modesty and dignity, however, we must have seemed to those who noticed us more like automatons, freaks, or even zombies, marching forward, oblivious to everything about us. The purpose was to maintain recollection but it also contained the deliberate notion of edifying those who observed us. In the sixteenth century edification, especially in Spain and the Latin countries, was a very important factor, and Ignatius thought that his novices and companions would edify the community by what we would now see as rather bizarre behaviour. Modesty of the eyes might have had the merit of preventing sudden and awkward turnings of the head that are irritating to most people, or inadvertent glancing at scantily clad manikins in a shop window, but whatever its efficacy for the individual trying to practise it, today it would provoke surprise if not mockery and derision. Another test was the “kitchen trial,” which took place in the house. For a month we were assigned to help the brothers in the kitchen prepare the meals and clean up afterwards. There were three brothers working there, the head chef and two assistants,

100

The Greater Glory

and they seemed to be happy to get help from us in the enormous job of feeding so many men. I don’t recall being of much help to them as our own spiritual duties were not curtailed, but we did perform a job for them that most cooks don’t like, cleaning up. The pots and pans were heavy and there seemed to be an endless stream of them. I do remember helping to make salads and cutting up vegetables, but I couldn’t keep up with the speed and accuracy of one young brother who, although he had only one eye, manipulated his hand like a trip-hammer. Besides the head cook, Brother Kline, who never lost his cool, there was the memorable figure of the pastry cook. He had been injured in a farm accident years before and was obliged to hobble about with a cane, so he spent his entire day sitting on a high stool turning out pies, cakes, and an amazing array of other pastries for special holy days called feast days. He never said a word except when spoken to, but you could see from the serene and even seraphic look on his face that he had mastered the technique of recollection and was in constant contact with Christ or one of the saints, probably the Blessed Virgin. As his lips moved he would keep bowing his head as if he were in another world, but it didn’t affect the quality of his pies. Not all of the twenty-three novices in our year survived. Even the Secundi by the time of their vows were down to four, and only seventeen of us took vows. What happened to the others? For one reason or another, mainly because they didn’t or couldn’t adjust to the life, one by one they were told to leave. The Latin word was “exivit,” that is “he has left,” but we used it also as a noun. “There’s been another “exivit,” we would say. Some I had come to know as much as one could given the caution not to talk about yourself and not to get too close to anyone: with most of my fellow novices it took years to get to know anyone. The method of a novice’s leaving was swift and harsh. His scanty belongings from his cubicle and desk were gathered up, his cassock was deposited, the small money allowance that was his own but kept by the master precisely against his leaving was given back – all done in absolute secrecy the day before. His trunk, which was kept in the trunk attic that we were never allowed to enter, was brought down in the middle of the night by one of the

“Elected Silence”

101

brothers and by five o’clock, before the rest of us were awake or aware of it, the novice was bundled into a taxi, driven to the Guelph station, and was off on the six a.m. train for Toronto and then home. No goodbyes, no chance to exchange a word, and the young man with whom you had lived as closely as you would aboard a navy ship was gone, and gone forever. You weren’t supposed to communicate with him afterwards, not even talk about him. He became a non-person, as if he hadn’t existed. This technique occurs in totalitarian countries or in ancient Rome with its “damnatio memoriae” (the condemnation of his memory), but it was a bit of a shock in a Christian religious order that we called the Societas amoris (the Society of love). The virtue of humility was greatly stressed, as it had been from the beginning by the founder. Ignatius himself was a humble man, and he despised any self-glorification or attempts to raise oneself above one’s station, hence the vow not to seek higher offices either in the Order or out of it, namely the refusal to become a bishop. The rules he wrote were full of references to the necessity of practising this virtue, and two of the means to achieve this end were the old monastic practices of chapter and public penances. The latter consisted of kneeling down in the dining room or refectory in the presence of the entire community, kissing the floor and extending one’s arms for the duration of the long grace before the meal. Another was kissing the shoes of the rector, which I must say were always clean and neatly polished. A third and more difficult exercise was to declare, in a prescribed formula, in Latin of course, an external fault that had been reported to the rector. This was not common, but with the more severe rectors this public declaration of a non-moral failing could be quite frequent. It happened to me once, later on in Toronto where we were studying theology. The rector there was a harsh man who never smiled and was forever in a foul mood. We had just finished a spirited hockey game and had come inside the back door to take off our skates. We weren’t supposed to talk inside the house once the time of recreation was over, but of course we were all lathered up and arguing about some point of the game. Although the seminary was an enormous five-floor structure, we must have been

102

The Greater Glory

making a racket that could be heard by some up in one of the corridors. Suddenly the door of the vestibule burst open and the glowering, flushed face of the rector appeared. Instead of saying, “Quiet, fellows, the others are trying to study,” he launched into a harangue and clapped on all of us a “culpa,” that is, a public declaration at the next meal of the fault of breaking silence outside of the prescribed times. A trivial matter like breaking silence did not call for such public self-abasement, but we had no choice. There was no recourse: if you refused to perform the penance you would probably be dismissed from the Order, for me at that time ten years after entrance into the Jesuits, but it could happen to someone who had been there fifteen, twenty, or any number of years. The recitation of the formula took place that evening at supper before the whole community. It was distressing, but there was comfort in having the company of three other malefactors. The Latin formula was recited by memory and by each one in turn, to stress, I presume, the heinousness of the deed. The exact wording I have forgotten but it began with, “reverendi patres et fraters carissimi,” that is, “reverend and dear fathers and brothers,” and the crucial part that everyone was listening for, the fault itself, began with “nempe quod” (namely the following), but the verb of “breaking” silence was in the subjunctive mood, the perfect subjunctive, if I recall. Now the subjunctive mood in Latin usually is to be construed as a possibility, a doubt or something alleged, not a fact. Even though the Latin construction was probably correct, in that “quod” often requires the subjunctive when the reason is viewed as that, not of the speaker or narrator, but of another, of itself it can be taken as either a fact or a possibility. Since the subjunctive was used, I saw the humour in it inasmuch as the whole matter could be looked upon as alleged or possible and not factual. One of the rules of Modesty was the famous Rule 32, that one should not touch another, even in jest. The only exception was touching in touch football, but that was more of a slam than a touch. We weren’t to stroke even dogs or horses, much less humans, but it never got into baby brothers or sisters or embracing our parents. Its purpose seemed to have been to preserve a certain dignity and to avoid any suggestion of intimacy. Ignatius didn’t

“Elected Silence”

103

mention the second vow, chastity, often, but he did say explicitly in one of the rules that the vow of chastity needs no explanation and that the purity of the angels should be emulated. That was a tall order and he was writing metaphorically of course, but the point was clear. The rule of requiring three and not two in a group or band was strictly carried out in the novitiate, and there was always an undercurrent of caution against getting too close to anyone. The master gave us one talk on avoiding a “particular friendship,” and in the absence of women everyone knew what he meant. It was a cautionary regulation, but it did militate later against forming healthy and solid friendships. It was appropriate in the novitiate to stress the spiritual aspect of one’s life – the intellectual was postponed until the succeeding years – but to ignore and implicitly deny the existence and development of one’s emotions redounded to the detriment of everyone. Every month the rules of the Order were read aloud in the refectory. This took at least three full days and it included the reading of Ignatius’ “letter on obedience,” a document that had great influence on other later religious groups and has been vigorously criticized and misunderstood over the centuries. It is a tough letter, and short excerpts taken out of context sound outrageous: for example, “What the superior commands and thinks good, should seem just and reasonable to the inferior … insofar as the will by its force can bend the understanding,” or “obedience should be like a blind man’s staff,” seem like a complete abandonment of one’s intellect, will, and conscience. The letter starts off: “Other religious orders may surpass the Society in fasting and other austerities which according to their institute they piously practice, but in true and perfect obedience and abnegation of will and judgment I greatly desire that those who serve God in this Society should be conspicuous … and should be distinguished by this mark.” Thus Ignatius considered obedience to be of supreme importance, but most of his ideas were not original and were taken from the rules and practices of the Benedictines, Carthusians, Carmelites, and Dominicans. One should obey the man in charge, the superior, Ignatius writes, “as if it were the command of Christ,” and should obey blindly with both the will and the intellect, which is

104

The Greater Glory

the highest degree of obedience, as if the person obeying were a dead body. It is true that this obedience sounds grotesque and unnatural, but what is not often said in its defence against those who accuse the Order of allowing the superior to order a subject to perform anything, even a sin, is that Ignatius explicitly says in the same letter that “obedience is to be rendered where there appears no sin,” also that this kind of obedience cannot be expected “where the evidence of the known truth be against it,” and lastly, if this is so, a recourse to a higher authority can always be made by the one who has been so ordered. The “letter on obedience” is a commanding and noble piece, requiring great faith, but I always found it hard to put it into practice despite its over-all balance and coherence. One of the sterner lessons of humility was the semi-annual chapter of faults, or “charity ball” as we called it, an ancient monastic custom whose aim was to facilitate the daily living together by informing others of their external faults in public. We gathered together in a circle of chairs presided over by the master of novices, and one by one we were called to kneel down in the centre of the circle and be exposed to the remarks of our fellow novices. The master introduced us to this ancient ritual by warning us that we were to exercise strict charity and we were not to reveal any moral faults. The place for that was in private with either him or the rector: “if anyone knowing a grave temptation of another outside of confession he should inform the superior.” The fault-finding of external matters was embarrassing enough. Most of the remarks were trivial, like “brother makes a mess in the washbasin or makes too much noise by scraping his chair on the floor,” etc., but occasionally there were a few barbs that the master jumped on and immediately reprimanded the speaker. Of course there was no comeback or rebuttal, and he had to call a halt to the flood of remarks that one poor fellow was subjected to. I must say that the master handled the whole process very wisely by not submitting everyone to the fire, and finally by ending it abruptly when he felt that enough “pointing out” had been exercised that day. After my turn I was flushed and perspiring, and we were all glad to get out and go to dinner where the rector was kind enough to declare a “Deo gratias” and so the tension was dissolved.

“Elected Silence”

105

As a result of this perpetual striving to do better, towards the middle of my Secundi year I began to feel unable to go through the routine of the daily ordo. The master took action quickly and arranged with a neurologist in Toronto to see me. He drove me in himself and I spent an hour with the doctor, who prescribed phenobarbitol, if I recall correctly, which resulted in making me feel very groggy and zombie-like. The alternatives were two-fold, either to go home, which I didn’t want to do as I earnestly wanted to take my vows at the end of the second year, or to go off the routine for a while, and that usually meant going down to the barn to help the brothers with the cattle. I chose the latter. It was a welcome change that consisted mainly of forking hay down from the loft to the cattle below and then shoveling manure into the moving trolleys. It was a tough job, but I was in good physical shape and eventually began to feel better. When I began to distinguish the varied faces and antics of the herd I knew it was time to ask to return to the routine of my fellow novices. Our two-week holiday at the rambling old house on the Speed River took place shortly afterwards, and with an eight-day retreat before taking vows our novitiate was over. But not for me. Most took their vows on September 8, a special day of the Blessed Virgin Mary but since I had “gone off ordo,” as it was called, and had spent some time in the barn, my vows were postponed – indefinitely. I was very disappointed but there was nothing I could do to change the decision of the master. While the others had their black suits (ugly, thick serge) and Roman collars when they walked to town I was still in mufti. We all wore the same cassocks in the house, however, so it wasn’t too painful. After July 31, the feast day of St Ignatius, we moved to another building, the house of the juniors, where we started our studies in the Greek and Latin classics in early September. I was thrilled to begin studying once again, but the pall of not having my vows hung over me. Fortunately, a new rector had been appointed. He sent for me and rapping on his door I heard a voice say come in, but when I entered I couldn’t see him: he was under his desk looking for something he had dropped. That informal posture immediately put me at ease, and after some kind words, which I was glad to get at that time, he said that I was to delay no longer and was to pronounce

106

The Greater Glory

my vows a few days hence. I think that he could see that all I needed was to be away from the artificial hothouse life of the novitiate, get absorbed in what he believed was more suitable to my mental and even spiritual life, and become a vowed Jesuit with a thick black suit like my fellows. As he himself had suffered from headaches all his life he was very sympathetic. I was overjoyed because without him and a kind fellow junior from Winnipeg by the name of Allan Peterkin, who told him of my condition, I wouldn’t have made it. The vow ceremony was simple but moving. The vows were pronounced in Latin, the altar decked with fall flowers, and the choir sang a beautiful hymn composed by Ignatius himself. Though the idea in the hymn was metaphorical, it was also baffling, something that I always found difficult and required great faith to accept: “Take and receive, O Lord, my liberty.” The novitiate experience was rich but sobering. It had required the full complement of my moral, physical, and spiritual energy but considerably less of my intellectual, and least of all, my emotional energy. It was not supposed to be an intellectual period, but the emotions, always bubbling underneath the surface, should have received much more attention and been re-directed by an expert hand. There was an attempt to come to terms with them when we were asked to fill out forms placing us in the four old stereotypes of sanguine, choleric, etc, but for post-war young men it was only scratching the surface. The duration of two years in the novitiate was one year more than that required by any other religious order and was an innovation that was approved in the early days only after much opposition by the popes but after more persuasive insistence by Ignatius. He felt that with this school of perfection behind them, or rather with its ideals in front of them, the young recruits would be ready for any task assigned to them. There was to be a complete reformation and re-direction of their lives and the main instrument of this reformation had been the retreat of thirty days that set them on their course for the rest of their lives. In my enthusiasm I too felt set on this course, but I am glad now that the direction that this course was to take was hidden from me then.

6 Repetition

the fall term in the new environment of the juniorate began after the celebration of Our Lady’s Feast Day on 8 September. The two-year program consisted mainly in the study of the Greek and Roman classics, with a minor in English and a half course – sad to say – in French. I was eager to dig in once again into my first love, but I soon discovered to my great disappointment that the first year of the program was set at the first-year college level. I had already studied all the material to be covered in my four years at the University of Manitoba. To accommodate the large, disparate class of seventeen, even the Greek was on the elementary level. The English course, too, was basic college material. Nevertheless, I enjoyed going over the famous odes of Horace, the love lyrics – but not all of them – of Catullus and several books of the Aeneid. I realized how little I had learned about them the first time and how much more meaning and substance they contained. After breakfast and cleaning up we were supposed to be at our desks by 8:30. We all had our own cubicles and our own desks and books. The cubicles ran up only about eight feet to a ten-foot ceiling, so you could hear the slightest stir next door, or rather curtain which served as a door, but it was blessedly private after the communal existence of the dormitory and ascetory of the novitiate. The cubicle had a cement floor painted a dark green, white plaster-board walls, and a large window with no curtain but looking out into the orchard, and it contained a tiny, single iron bed, a wooden desk with a generous surface so that you could lay open

108

The Greater Glory

half a dozen books, a hard wooden chair to match, and in the corner a wooden clothes press for our wardrobe. This consisted of one black suit, two cassocks, two Roman collars, two dress shirts, three T-shirts, three pairs of socks, three sets of underwear, and, oh yes, one sweater, black, and two pairs of shoes. It was wonderful to have the sun blaze in on sunny days, especially if you were on the east side and got the morning sun and not the heat of afternoon. However, to prevent becoming too attached even to this modest cell, we were switched across the hall either on the second or third floor every six months, but the move did have the merit of taking all of five minutes. For an hour before class we prepared for the translation of the text we had been assigned on the previous day when we had heard the prelection, that is, a lecture helping us with the difficulties we might encounter in construing the texts. I had no difficulty with the Latin, but Plato’s Apology I had to work hard on. The first class was Latin, always pronounced in the Italian manner. The young Jesuit professor, Father Larry Braceland, was enthusiastic and well prepared, forever carrying in a huge pile of heavy tomes to illustrate some recondite point of syntax or interpretation. He had a good ma in Classics from the University of Toronto, which at that time, and probably now as well, had the best Classics program in Canada, second to Harvard on the continent, I think. Most of the Jesuits in English Canada who took Classics then studied under Gilbert Norwood. None that I know went on for and finished the phd, but stopped after the ma that being considered adequate preparation for college teaching in those days. Even the professors at Toronto, most of them English, had only the Master’s degree. Five times a week we had assignments in Latin prose and Latin poetry composition, that is, translating English sentences and paragraphs into classical Latin, or rendering English poems into the classical meters of Horace and Catullus. I didn’t find the prose difficult, especially the sentences from “Bradley’s Arnold”; every piece was carefully marked with a red pencil for our correction, but the difficulty came later when we had to imitate the style of

Repetition

109

one of the great authors like Cicero. Although I enjoyed turning English poems into the classical meters I was not as quick or adept as one of my companions, Tom Heaney, from Montreal, who had an extraordinary flair for turning English poems not only into the Latin quantitative meters but also into the complicated meters of Greek. Later, while taking his Master’s at Toronto, he died tragically in a car accident. A proficiency in reading and writing Latin was essential, but speaking and understanding the language were also required: it was the language of the Catholic Church and not only the Mass but also all documents and communication at that time and 2,000 years beforehand were in Latin. Later in the Jesuit program of studies in philosophy and theology all courses and even exams were to be conducted in Latin, so it was absolutely necessary to get started in reading and speaking what was then far from a dead language. Even in those early days of the training, outside recreation times, we were supposed to communicate with one another in Latin. Of course our speech was halting, garbled, and inaccurate, but somehow the meaning usually got through. Seeing the first or second person singular of the verb or the nominative and accusative cases of the nouns on the written page was one thing and easy enough to grasp, but hearing them and replying according to the rules of grammar involved a lot of trial and error. In my case, I always found it easier to speak Latin rather than to understand it when spoken to me. After a short break we had our Greek class at 10:30. It was mostly grammar with the use of Connell and later Homer and Plato’s Apology. I loved Greek with its addition to the singular and plural of the dual number and all its forms, a third mood called the optative, the tiny words called proclitics and enclitics that added so much meaning and subtlety to the language, and other peculiarities that Latin didn’t have. I’d had elementary Greek before in college but it was a refreshing review. A knowledge of Greek was essential for an understanding of the New Testament in the original and the Septuagint, an early translation of the Hebrew Old Testament by Jewish scholars in Alexandria, but also

110

The Greater Glory

for philosophy, Plato but mainly Aristotle, whom we were to study a few years later. In the second year at least one Greek play was studied and sometimes put on the stage. Then there was the usual examination of conscience at 11:45 and lunch and recreation time until 1:30. We would walk up and down the sidewalks and paths, keeping clear of the new novices with whom we were forbidden to speak, and conversing on topics that were a trifle broader than “novice talk” but still completely cut off from all that was happening in the wider world beyond the acreage around us. At 1:30 we went to our cubicles for a spell of free time or to prepare for class an hour later, but not to sleep, although many of us dozed off with our arms on our desks. English class was conducted by a young priest with a profound love of English literature, especially its poetry. With a good ma from the University of Manitoba, Father Patrick Plunkett had been exposed to all the great works, and he recited the poems we were studying in a moving and enchanting voice. He insisted on a good deal of memorization that we had to recite at the beginning of class. No mistake in rhyme or rhythm was permitted, and not knowing who was to be asked to recite, we breathed more easily when the test was over. Milton’s “Lycidas” was first on his list and we covered it line by line from “Yet once more, O ye laurels” down to “fresh woods, and pastures new.” There were many others that I have forgotten, but one that I haven’t was Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” because there occurred two memorable lapses in its recitation by one of my fellow juniors. “Halts by me that footfall” became in one rendition, “Halts by me that football”; the second, “With thy young skyiey blossoms heap me over” became “With thy young skyiey bosoms heap me over.” It was uncharitable to laugh but we couldn’t help it, while our sensitive young professor writhed and twisted in pain and exasperation. In his course, he rekindled my love of the Romantics and Victorians. He was a poet himself but never wanted to reveal anything he wrote, and it was only after his death that I saw some of his work. He was right: it wasn’t of a calibre that many thought it might have been. After the afternoon class we had an hour of free time, and most of us dashed down to the football field for a game of touch

Repetition

111

football. Others played tennis on our homemade court or handball, while the non-athletic ones sauntered about through the orchards. In winter we played hockey on the pond into which we often fell through in milder weather, but that didn’t bother us a bit. Some of the fellows had played junior and even professional hockey, so it was hard getting the puck away from them. The hour passed only too quickly as we were to be at our desks by 4:30 for what was known as “Sacred Study.” The rigid regimentation of the daily program was epitomized by this study period in that it was divided into four half-hour segments. The first was devoted to Latin prose composition. “Bradley’s Arnold” and the Latin dictionary had to be open and ready to go when the bell rang. By five you had to have your sentences or paragraphs translated and finished because at the tinkle of a little bell it was time to move on to the Latin authors. Too bad if you weren’t finished your composition because it was now time for the authors. Then at 5:30 it was Greek grammar and composition, and at 6, Greek authors. At the end of each segment that crazy little bell would ring, and, leaving a Greek accent hanging in the air, you could hear over the cubicle walls all the books of your fellows slam shut. Thus there were four slamming shuts and at 6:25 it was all over. This segmentation had been imposed by our mean-spirited dean and militated against enjoyment and even proficiency. We were always working under pressure to get the material covered in exactly thirty minutes, and I knew of no one who benefited by it. There were four exams in those four areas, plus one in English and one in French. Besides these, we were subjected to two oral exams lasting ten minutes each, Latin and Greek poetry from memory. Selected passages from the great authors were assigned to each to be recited from memory. What was hardest was fretting outside the room waiting to be called in. I had a fair memory, but by the time I was summoned I wasn’t sure of anything. Everyone had a little sheet with him to go over his passages, but the more I looked at mine the more I was convinced my mind was a blank. After an interminable wait I was called in and miraculously I got through it all. Yet many didn’t and had to repeat the ordeal,

112

The Greater Glory

although there was a limit even to repetition, one extra try, if I remember correctly. There was a surprising importance placed on this exercise of memory and some who couldn’t overcome this trivial hurdle had to repeat their year. One of the most practical and pleasant tasks we were assigned was the Sunday morning theme. A topic, any wide-ranging topic, was given and we had two hours to complete it. It might be a piece of prose, or a poem, or more difficult, imitating a piece of prose or poetry in the style of one of the great authors – Burke, Macaulay, Wordsworth, Tennyson, etc. By imitating the style of the masters we would eventually develop our own style. It was a time-honored practice that has been carried on over the centuries in schools and colleges of any importance. Christmas was an enjoyable time. Midnight Mass, the singing, the special treats at table, the decorations, the sports helped us not to think too much of our families. Another treat was not having to submit to the regime of Sacred Study, but also during these two weeks we were allowed to read the novels of the English classics. We were given access to our little library on the ground floor that at other times was off-limits even though it was there always and open, in front of us, fifty weeks of the year. It was a good library but it had been carefully selected. No Victor Hugo nor the Dumases nor Laurence Sterne but many copies of Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope. It was a bit of a feast, though not all made use of the time permitted. The main library of the juniors, which contained mostly classical authors and commentators was, unfortunately, at that time, off-limits. We had our grammars, dictionaries, and texts and that was deemed to be enough: a commentary on a particular text differing from that of the professor in class was not acceptable. In that inaccessible library there was also a locked and caged section called “Hell” to which even the fathers had no access. Only Father Librarian could grant permission to one who requested access. What lurid books were hidden in “Hell” could only be known from the card index, but what was contained within their covers no one except the all-knowing and judging Librarian could possibly know. We were well protected against the “smut” of Ovid and the “other” poems of Catullus and Martial.

Repetition

113

Also during the Christmas holidays or shortly afterwards we put on a play. In my year Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral was enacted, and everything from acting, staging and costumes was done by the juniors themselves. I played a very minor part, being one of the chorus that kept repeating “wash the wind” and “clear the air,” but the part of one of the leads who got sick was taken by a very bright fellow who memorized his lines in two days. The costumes of the knights were somewhat ludicrous, high, flaring jerkins made from stiff sacking, and leggings made of long underwear dyed bright red, but the applause from the audience made us think that it had been a great success. During term we also put on debates directed by one of the professors. They were not ordinary debates but ones set in classical times on some ancient theme, all in Latin. Much of the material was prepared, but there was also a time given to extemporaneous exchange. This was fun and though the remarks were more like kitchen Latin, it gave the crowd a chance to heckle and challenge the disputants. I remember shouting in derision “mulier fortis” (formidable woman), to a fellow junior who had the part of a scheming Roman lady, for which I was afterwards commended by my professor for what he considered a pithy intervention. No one except the priests at that point understood all the dialogue, but somehow most of us got quite worked up as we shouted Latin phrases and epithets back and forth. At one point I think I recall the professor in charge calling a halt to the fray. During the second term the house had a visit from the head of the Order in English Canada, Father Provincial. Once every year during his six-year tenure he would come to each house to see how things were proceeding there, mainly to hear from each member of the house a report of his well-being, or what was known as the “Manifestation of Conscience.” This was a mechanism set down by Ignatius so that the man in charge, the superior, could know exactly what each man was doing but above all, the state of his soul was discussed in order that the superior might help and direct the individual as kindly and accurately as possible. Ignatius considered this of immense importance for without a full knowledge of a man’s capabilities and failings he felt that the Order could not

114

The Greater Glory

perform the work that its mission called for. It was a difficult and anxious task for the individual to reveal all that went in his soul and in his life but this complete openness proved an essential and marvelous instrument in the prudent direction of a Jesuit’s life and career, and on a larger scale in the efficient running of the Order. Although the Provincial could act in the external forum by moving a man to another posting or re-directing his career, everything that was said in the Manifestation was strictly confidential and the bond of secrecy ranked next to the seal of sacramental confession. Another form of spiritual guidance on a lower and more immediate level was keeping the rector of the house informed of the state of your soul and whether you were happy and successful in the task assigned to you. This apparently was not absolutely necessary but it was helpful both for the individual and the rector in the smooth operation of the house. On a more spiritual level, of course, was the sacrament of confession. We were encouraged to go to confession once a week and not oftener, as more often than that could lead to seeing more sins than there really were, or scruples, in other words, and with my past history I had to be careful. We were told to go regularly to one priest so that he could get to know us and so help to guide us as judiciously as possible. This was good advice and I kept with one man all the time I was at Guelph. We really didn’t have any special friends in the novitiate and juniorate. We weren’t supposed to, as I have mentioned, but we were to be friends with all, to be “all things to all men.” It had merit as we had to learn to get along later as priests with everybody. Some you liked to be with, obviously, others less so. There was always the undercurrent of worry that a particular friendship would blossom, so in the three years there, although I did get to know a few fellows better than others, I still learned very little about them, their families, or their lives before they entered. A symbol of this imposed distance was our having to avoid using first names. It was Brother X or Brother Y in the novitiate, never Tom or Bill, and after vows in the juniorate we were supposed to call each other, Mr X or Mr Y. There was perhaps a certain dignity to this practice, but it was cold and formal, setting up a barrier

Repetition

115

against the natural display of warmth and affection. Though we followed the rule in the novitiate, most found it impossible to address a fellow one’s own age as Mister, and we got around it by substituting nicknames with a “y” often tacked on, like Browney for Browne, or “Stoney” for Johnstone. Before we went to Toronto to study philosophy there was much deliberation among the superiors as to whether first names should then be permitted. At long last they came down on the side of humanity, and word was passed on that first names would be tolerated. Although I always had been called Stephen at home, I was labeled Steve, which stuck for the duration. Later I formed several very solid friendships, but unfortunately they did not last after I left the Order. The first year of the juniorate was called “Poetry,” the second “Rhetoric.” The titles were partially accurate as there was emphasis on the Greek and Latin poets in the first year and on the rhetoric of Demosthenes and Cicero in the second, but there was much else besides. The poetry year corresponded roughly to freshman college, rhetoric to sophomore, perhaps a little higher but not appreciably so. At the end of my first year the superior decided that since I already had a ba and had covered far more material than even the second year, I was to proceed to the next stage, to study philosophy at the Jesuit Seminary in Toronto. The juniorate was not exactly the hothouse of the novitiate but it was far too regimented and not conducive to the learning that I had been exposed to at the University of Manitoba. I was glad to move on after 31 July, the feast of St Ignatius, when all the personnel changes were announced, especially because it meant that before leaving for Toronto we were to take a course in the texts of Aristotle at the seminary’s summer house in the Muskoka Lakes, north of Toronto.

7 No Kant

the new “ philosophers, ” as we were called, were driven across country from Guelph to Lake Joseph near Gordon Bay. Some had been sent to the French-Canadian Jesuit seminary in Montreal to improve their French and take their courses there. I had asked to be sent there but Father Provincial had thought otherwise and I had been assigned to Toronto with most of the others. In the past all the “philosophers” had gone to England for their studies at Heythrop College in Oxfordshire, but after 1930 most went to Toronto where the English-Canadian Jesuits had opened up their own seminary for the study of philosophy and, some years later, of theology. The summerhouse or villa was an old hotel on the edge of a promontory overlooking Lake Joseph. It was a beautiful setting where I was to spend at least one month of seven summers. The house was only a shell with stucco walls and bare floors, but we spent most of our time outside or in our simple rooms reading or preparing for our class in the texts of Aristotle. There was ample time for swimming in the warm, deep water, rowing in the “Peterboroughs,” or hiking along the roads or through the forest. On break days we would leave right after breakfast, take our lunch and row all day to some remote point in one of three large connecting lakes, Joseph, Rosseau, or Muskoka, often covering thirty-five miles or more. There were some idyllic spots nearby like Angels’ Cove and Plunkett’s Pocket where we would bring our lunches and swim in the incredibly clear water. Even in high winds we

No Kant

117

would go onto the lake, put up a blanket for a sail, and careen about. There was also a volleyball game every afternoon that was very competitive. With all these activities we got to be in great physical shape, which was very helpful when we had to return to Toronto in late August. The seminary in Toronto was a rambling, barracks-like structure on Wellington Street next to the tracks. It had been built as a convent school long before and sold to the Jesuits in 1930. The building consisted of several wings, mostly of dark red brick turned almost black over the years by the belching smoke of thousands of coal-burning engines in the shunting yards. It was really a gigantic tinderbox, each room having a rope tied around the radiator to enable the occupant to escape by the window in case of fire. The fire department of Toronto had declared it a five-alarm fire, and in my time there were several small but frightening blazes, often in the paper chute. The large sprawling building of five floors was built around the original structure that had belonged to the governor of Upper Canada. Although you could see little of this building from the outside, the interior of the ground floor was still quite elegant, with spacious, high-ceilinged drawing rooms, large plaster rosettes on the ceiling where chandeliers undoubtedly had once hung, and long French windows that opened onto a winding wooden balcony. Although there were five floors, there were many more levels, perhaps ten, as you were forever going up or down little stairways on the same floor. The Jesuit inhabitants had contrived a nickname for every level over the years, like “Glass Alley” on the first floor, a set of rooms where I spent my first year; the walls facing the corridor were opaque glass. I think that it had been the music room in the old convent, and while retaining the glass walls the space had been divided by beaverboard into four rooms on each side of the corridor. Though it was cut off from the house, I rather liked that room, one reason being that is was directly over the kitchen and thus warm in a barracks that had heat only twice a day, early morning and late afternoon. Then there was “Students’ Row,” so called, I believe, because for some years those taking their ma’s at the U of T, being special students, lived there. These rooms were

118

The Greater Glory

right over the front door and the occupants could see who were coming up the front drive. The rooms had nice hardwood floors but the heat never adequately reached Students’ Row. The end room had a small door in the south wall that led into the chapel choir loft, and for choir practice we often sneaked in that way. The coldest wing was on the top floor of the governor’s mansion, appropriately labeled “Eskimo Flat.” In winter frost would form not only on the four-foot thick walls but also on the blankets of the bed. I spent two years out of my seven there and in the cold weather I always studied in a heavy sweater or overcoat. Eskimo Flat had been staff quarters in the old days and had only one small window overlooking Front Street and the rail yards. As there were no screens, the black soot came pouring in the tiny window night and day, all fall and spring, and even somehow in the winter so that we had to pick up a dustbin full of coal dust every morning. The other little area with a quaint name was the “Band Box,” a set of two or three rooms on its own level near our recreation room in what had been a kind of tower. For some reason these rooms were prized, and since we chose rooms according to the seniority of year and entrance-day, and I was low in both, I never lived there, but I don’t think that I would have chosen the Band Box anyway as it was noisy, and, being under Eskimo Flat, perpetually chilly. All of us spent a fair amount of time in the chapel. It was spacious and high ceilinged, done in the rococo style with copious decorations in light blue plaster. We were obliged to be present at five minutes to six every morning for a “visit” before the hour of our meditation, and the sub-rector checked everyone’s presence or absence. The general Mass would take place an hour later at which all the seminarians would be expected to be present except those that served the Masses of the thirty priests who said their Masses in private chapels scattered throughout the house. The Litanies of the Saints would be recited at nine in the evening and after that there was “Sacred Silence”: no talking until after breakfast next morning. Busy as we all were with our studies and other activities, we were supposed to maintain a quiet spirit of “recollection” at all times. If we weren’t thinking about some metaphysical conundrum, we were encouraged to be tranquil and think of something

No Kant

119

spiritual and inspiring throughout most of the day. This could quiet a troubled spirit but it could also be overdone and detract from the task at hand. I would often drop into the chapel during the day for a visit and say a few prayers. All spiritual conferences were given there to the community. It had a fairly pleasant atmosphere but was cold, requiring a sweater or coat in the winter. Most of our praying was done in our small private rooms – the morning meditation, the two examinations of conscience, the preparation for next day’s meditation. When the heat was on in the early morning there was a great tendency during meditation to drowse at one’s kneeler, or to nod off even when standing up. A rather obnoxious custom tended to obviate this, in that one of the fellows was assigned to check up on us during these spiritual activities to see whether we were, first, in our rooms, and secondly, not asleep in bed. He was called, rather euphemistically, the “visitor” and was supposed to report to the sub-rector if anyone was remiss. He would quietly open your door without knocking at any time during the time of meditation and the two examinations of conscience, poke his head in and half smile, then close the door and slide away. It was an odious job and an odious custom taken from the monastic tradition and anyone assigned to it disliked it as much as those he looked in upon. Although we joked about it at the time, it nevertheless implied a lack of trust and respect for the young seminarians: that kind of spying and reporting was the very thing that drove the young Stalin out of his Georgian seminary, although he himself employed the process to monstrous effect in his later life. Every group, or grade, had its own recreation room. Ours, the philosophers, even had its own special level. You went down several steps to get into the adjoining room, the philosophers’ library, and then up again two steps into a large but low room with windows reaching from floor to ceiling. The floors were the original soft pine and were hollowed in the more frequented parts, while the floors in the wings built by the nuns were of hardwood and nicely polished by the brothers. The “theologians,” who were two steps ahead of us in the course of studies, had their recreation room and their own sections of the house, as did the fathers and the brothers. Since

120

The Greater Glory

we were on different grades or levels, as in the house, strangely enough, no communication between us was permitted. Of course we were allowed to consult the professors, the rector, and the minister, the man in charge of running the house, but except in games we weren’t supposed to mingle with the theologians. A few did but if caught they would have to give a public penance. If we had visitors, which was rare for me, we entertained them in the elegant front rooms of the mansion called “parlours.” They were kept very clean, as I recall, but they were off-limits except to receive guests. I once had a visit in mid-morning from an old Winnipeg girlfriend. How she got through the barricade of the brother at the reception desk who had strict orders not to allow any visitors to the seminarians unless permission had been obtained, I cannot imagine, but since she was from far-away Winnipeg, she slipped through. In any event, the visit was short as she quickly perceived that I was apparently well established in my choice of life and I no doubt gave the impression that I didn’t want to resume the relationship. In the basement were the kitchen and the huge dining room, which could seat the whole community – about 150 in my time. Each of the four groups had in its own section, and we all filed in together at the sound of the bell, capped in our birettas. When the rector and the fathers were in place at the head table, we waited for Father Minister, the sub-rector, to say the grace, the same grace of course as at Guelph. The same procedure too of the reading of Scripture and then of an interesting book followed, and even with a much larger room and more than a 150 hungry men eating and the clatter of plates, the reader had no microphone and was forced to raise his voice to its highest volume. The prefect of reading, one of the theology professors, was a cranky perfectionist who demanded fullness of volume and exactitude in pronunciation and phrasing. With his mouth half full he would roar out “repetat,” at some slip that you had made. If it were a mispronunciation you would know immediately as it would generally provoke a muffled titter. The mistake was usually a fault in phrasing, as I have mentioned earlier, since in our preparation we would have looked up any doubtful words in the Oxford English Dictionary,

No Kant

121

which was the prescribed dictionary all through the course. Minute preparation was called for in the proper phrasing. There had to be a pause, for instance, after the subject of a sentence with its modifiers or accompanying phrases before the verb, and the maintenance of an interrogatory tone in a long question was considered offensive to the ears. A normal but raised tone was called for, with no rhetorical flourishes, but it was more inflected than the reading required in the French Canadian houses, the “recto tono,” an even, almost staccato monotone. To be heard above the din around you, the sustained effort of projecting yet controlling your voice, tired you out until after a harrowing twenty-five minutes the second reader took over, but it was excellent practice for later reading and preaching. Even then you could tell who would become the effective preachers. Classes began in early September. The first year was given over to two main courses, logic and epistemology, and ontology, a branch of metaphysics. Full lectures were given in both, five days a week, all in Latin. The logic and epistemology course was conducted by a Jesuit who was later to become head of the Canadian Jesuits, and although his Latin was good, he was a tedious and boring teacher. The logic we studied was entirely Aristotelian, not a word on Stoic logic nor, God forbid, modern logic. That went on drearily for about two months and then we moved on to epistemology, the study of the grounds or method of human knowing. While struggling to follow the ecclesiastical Latin uttered with a Canadian accent, I remember only one thing about the course, that both Descartes with his “cogito, ergo sum” and especially the monumental figure of Plato were always our adversaries and thus to be discounted or put down with a single syllogism. The second main course, ontology, the study of “being,” was much more interesting, mainly because it was given by a dynamic professor, Fr John Cass, who spoke Latin beautifully in a rapidfire delivery and handed out mimeographed sheets for every topic or what was known as a thesis. The entire course was divided into approximately twenty-five to thirty theses, which dealt mainly with being and the qualities of being and basically followed the metaphysics of Aristotle and St Thomas Acquinas. Everything

122

The Greater Glory

you had to know to pass the exam was outlined on those sheets. It was unrealistic and rather pretentious to expect to know a particular aspect of being, such as “oneness,” from a single sheet, but it was much more pretentious to dismiss a famous philosopher such as Plato or Kant in a single line or syllogism. However, the thesis format was very helpful in that it focused or concentrated the problem on what was called the “status quaestionis,” that is the nature or essence of the question, the essential feature of the topic at hand, encapsulated in a single phrase or sentence. Every thesis was based on a problem or point that had exercised philosophers over the centuries, and to express that problem in a single sentence or phrase it was not only important to know precisely what you were going to discuss or argue about, but also to avoid or preclude any other topic that might not bear exactly on the point at issue. As we know from experience, most of the debates and arguments we all indulge in either miss the precise point or else stray into other areas. What exactly are we going to discuss or talk about? This system was applied through the entire marathon of our training, right to the end of our study of theology, just as it had persisted through the centuries from medieval times, and was of immense value in focusing on the point at issue. What the thesis format taught us was precision, exactitude, and brevity, but the emphasis on brevity, unfortunately, forced us into over-simplification, and the course failed to answer or even come to terms with most of the timeless problems posed by the great minds of the past. The thesis began with the status quaestionis, expressed in a single phrase or sentence. From the very beginning, then, you knew just what you were going to explore and what you were going to try to prove. Next came a short section called “ad terminos,” the definition of the terms used in the thesis, a very helpful point as so many arguments tend to employ different meanings of the terms or words we use from those used by the opposing sides. Then came a longer, but still brief, statement of the positions of the philosophers that held a different view of the thesis to be proved. Thus, for example, Plato’s position on his innate, universal ideas was described in a sentence or two, quite unfair to Plato, of course, but helpful towards overturning him in the last section on

No Kant

123

“objections.” Kant also was a favourite target, as were Descartes and Hegel. Then came the proof, if I recall correctly, artfully contrived in a few syllogisms. After the so-called adversaries had been succinctly set up like straw men, the final section demolished them, Plato first, then Kant, Marx, etc., and even at times Aristotle, for example, on the eternity of the world, all overturned in a single sentence, all routed by challenging the implications of the adversary’s position in the minor – never the major for that would be very impolite – part of an Aristotelian syllogism. It was neat and sharp but most unjust to the author. Overall, however, the exercise of pinpointing and epitomizing the argument in a single sentence or phrase, the status quaestionis, proved to be invaluable to me not only during my long course of studies but in the years to come. We ourselves couldn’t check on the full and perhaps real position of any particular adversary because we didn’t have access to the large library, which, though it held on its shelves the full works of all the authors studied, was off-limits to our untrained minds. The only way to obtain the works of Kant, for example, was to consult the card index and then with a slip of paper bearing the information in hand, try to get permission from the Father Librarian, who would be very loathe to permit the heretical Kant to be perused by curious scholastics. Occasionally he would grant a reluctant permission, but always with the implication that it could be dangerous for us to read and also that there really was no need to consult the original texts: any difficulties could be solved by privately consulting the professor teaching the course. Besides, you could ask a question in class as the professor was supposed to be omniscient in his field. The small philosophers’ library accessible to us was useless as it contained little more than more copies of the textbooks we already used in class. This restriction lasted until the late 1950s, almost to the end of my studies in theology, when full access to the house library was finally granted. The purpose of the restriction was, presumably, to protect our innocent minds and guard against error but, like any prohibition against knowledge and learning, it served only to frustrate and stultify. There were also neat little tags to be used in making distinctions, or to be inserted on any appropriate occasions. Phrases like “quidquid percipitur per modum percipientis percipitur” (whatever

124

The Greater Glory

is perceived is perceived according to the capacity of the perceiver), or “quidquid movetur, ab alio movetur” (whatever is moved, is moved by another), both from Aristotle, I think, through Acquinas. There was a tendency to put any truth into a nutshell, and use and cling to it for more than it was worth but aphorisms were handy in bowling over the mailed knights, especially in the absence of the knight’s full text. One of the small tasks assigned to me in that first year was to be the mailman for the priests of the house. The mail would come in early and after breakfast about eight o’clock I would make the rounds with batches of mail and knock at the doors of those who received any. I found the task interesting because I was able in a small way to get to know the fathers, who otherwise were offlimits to us lowly first-year philosophers. I was always very kindly received and they were happy to receive their hand-delivered mail. What was more interesting was even at this early hour to see them all at work at their desks. It was apparent that some had been busy for at least an hour by that time because books and papers were open and arranged across their desks. When I opened the door of one of the philosopher professors, although the room was always cool, I was astounded to see that he was always perspiring on his forehead, from heavy mental concentration, I suppose. I hated to break the spell, but he didn’t receive much mail anyway. The professor I liked to chat with for a moment was the theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan. At that time he was working on his great book Insight and he typed his manuscript on a small portable typewriter himself. Despite his awesome appearance, booming voice, and penetrating gaze, he always had a few kind words for me, especially of encouragement, but what I found amazing was that he would get into the writing mode at this time of the morning by reading one of the Greek tragedies, in the original of course, as a kind of warming-up exercise for his later mental gyrations. I was fortunate to attend an extra-curricular course he was offering in the house on the Insight I saw him labouring on day by day. Thursdays, “feria quinta,” the fifth day of the week, was our holiday. After breakfast we would make our lunch down near the

No Kant

125

kitchen and, armed with 10 cents and two streetcar tickets that we had to line up for at Father Minister’s office, we would take off for the day. By this time we were trusted to go out two-by-two, no longer in the three-by- three bands of the novitiate. A trio clad in black suits and hats would have looked absurd tramping the streets of Toronto. As it was, in the early 50’s, Catholics in Toronto were not always kindly received. One of my colleagues was walking to classes at the University of Toronto when a slatternly woman leaned out of a window and yelled, “To hell with the Pope.” Not to be outdone, and being an American, he shouted back, “And the same with the Queen.” We would jump onto a Yonge Street car, go to the end of the line and start walking in the countryside, having some distant spot as our destination for our modest lunch – the 10 cents to be used for a soft drink – and then head back to the beginning of the car line and arrive home at 403 Wellington around five, tired but completely relaxed, having covered a hundred topics and solved a hundred problems, philosophical and otherwise. One of our usual destinations was Toronto Island. The ferry was close to 403 and the fare was only one streetcar ticket each way. At times we would swim, but generally just walk and watch the activity of the ships in the harbour and then take the ferry back for supper and another week of class and study. Occasionally we would take in a movie in downtown Toronto on our Thursday outings. It didn’t cost us seminarians a cent as Famous Players granted free access to the clergy, but the privilege was frowned upon by the Jesuit superiors as being too worldly, and the upshot was that they came down hard on any scholastic who was caught attending a Thursday movie, with the drastic threat of postponing the ordination of the culprit, perhaps indefinitely. The prohibition was harsh but wonderfully effective. Once a month we were treated to an in-house movie. The choice was left to one of the older scholastics studying theology who, by reason of his age and experience in the ways of the world – he was almost thirty when he entered the Order – was supposed to be able to exercise a sounder judgment in his choices than we younger fry of twenty-five. For the most part he made excellent choices which, by the way, had to receive a final approval from the

126

The Greater Glory

vice-rector. Those were the days of Audrey Hepburn and June Allyson, and we loved every minute of their wholesome entertainments. The elegant old salon of the governor’s mansion was the showing room, packed to overflowing with priests, scholastics, and brothers. However, not everyone in the community approved of all that transpired on the screen. In one scene of one of the more mature films when a romantic clinch was impending, an older father was heard to groan, “O Lord, don’t let them do it.” Incidentally, this priest was typical of many members of the Canadian English Jesuit Province, having one parent French, one English, as did I. The others were often Irish Canadian on both sides. However, both contained a flaw of narrowness and intolerance that manifested itself more often than was salutary for their own peace of mind and for those Catholics they dealt with in their later ministry. As the generations advanced there was less intolerance and rigidity, but the flaw seemed to be ingrained in the bones and hard to shake. I was given to it myself and had to fight against it all my life. In my view it stemmed back to the rigour of early Irish asceticism, standing in cold water up to one’s neck for hours on end, for example, or jumping half naked into bushes of brambles, etc., but it also harked back to the narrowness and intolerance that the Irish priests absorbed in the Jansenist seminaries of France and Holland when they were forced to study away from Ireland by Cromwell and, sadly, by the British Parliament in the succeeding centuries. Cornelis Jansen was a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian who had a twisted view of human nature and the Church, and his doctrines exercised an enormously baleful influence on the clergy of France, the Low Countries, and the exiles who came to study with them. The same could be said of the French-Canadian seminaries that were staffed in early times by many Jansenist priests who had been trained either in those seminaries in France or by their successors in Quebec. It was a curious irony of history that it was the Jesuits of France who fought tirelessly against the Jansenists and finally succeeded in having Jansen’s views declared heretical, but the damage had already been done in Canada. Many of my fellow Jesuit scholastics were infected by this rigorist

No Kant

127

Jansenist strain, but it was entirely foreign to the few Italians and those of other racial backgrounds who studied with us. What proved to be most harmful, however, was when such men became superiors of Canadian Jesuit houses and began to interpret regulations in the strictest and most literal fashion and to rule over their charges with rigidity and intolerance. The farther they were from Rome, the more literal and rigid they seemed to become. This judgment might sound harsh because in the majority of cases I found that most Jesuit superiors treated me and others with the benevolence and charity Ignatius had laid down, but there were some who were infected with this Jansenist strain, and many others who, though generally benign, had to fight against it during the tenure of their leadership. A friend of mine who went to England to study was given a watch by his parents before he left. He wasn’t a novice but had been in the Order for at least four years. He had to apply for permission to keep the watch, not from the superior of the house but from the chief superior, Father Provincial. At a general meeting of the provincial and his consultors, that is, his advisers, the question was brought up and discussed back and forth: was it advisable to allow this young man to have a watch while no one else had one? The matter was much bandied about, with the pros and cons vigorously debated. He needed a watch in England; he was far enough along in the Order not to be corrupted by it. On the other hand his fellow Canadians would not have one. Was that fair? Finally, one of the older consultors interposed with a laconic, “Give the boy the watch,” and the case was closed. Another case involved the occasion of my mother’s death when I asked for permission to fly home. It was denied on the grounds of expense. I had to take the train, two full days and nights, to make the journey home. I acceded without demur as the superior’s will was held to be God’s will, but it took a lot of willing on my part to believe that. All Jesuits were trained to submit to what those in charge wanted of us and for us. We were completely dependent on them for everything, not only in things of the spirit but also in material things. Permission had to be requested for a streetcar ticket or a pair of socks, just as for a suit of clothes or an automobile. The

128

The Greater Glory

first Jesuit vow that we took, the vow of poverty, was one not of indigence but of dependence. There was, however, a little loophole in that dependence inasmuch as you could, usually in less important matters, act on your own according to a principle of what was known as “presuming permission.” That is, if you could ascertain what the superior’s state of mind might be if you were in a position to ask him, then you could go right ahead. It would be difficult to ask permission for something face to face, for example, if you were preaching a mission 5,000 miles away on the Island of Zanzibar. This might sound bizarre, but it was quite common for Jesuits to be sent on a moment’s notice to perform some apostolic deed a world away from home base. This was part of a Jesuit’s life and calling, and though difficult it was also exhilarating, and only partly because on mission you could presume permission. The second year was devoted to psychology and cosmology. The former was rational or philosophical, not experimental, psychology, and the latter dealt with the world as a totality of all phenomena in space and time. That year the psychology professor was ill, so we simply doubled up on cosmology with two lectures per day all first term. Cosmology is a branch of metaphysics and so highly theoretical. Apart from a few minor courses, we had to spend our entire energies on that very abstruse subject with the result that it soon became too much for many of us. The main stress of the course, as I remember, was to make doubly sure that we understood the Aristotelian distinction between accidental and substantial change. The concept itself is simple enough: for example, changing a piece of wood into a chair or table is an accidental or non-essential change since it still remains wood, while burning a piece of wood into smoke, carbon, and carbon dioxide is a substantial change or change in essence or nature since it is no longer wood. The professor was not a vibrant lecturer, and he kept pounding away, in Latin of course, incessantly day after day on this single topic. I soon began to doubt whether I really did understand the difference and to wonder whether there must be something more, something deeper that I hadn’t grasped and possibly could never grasp. The image of accidental change he kept repeating like a tattoo that I hear to this very day fifty years later was “aes sphaericum in aes cubicum” (a brass sphere changing into a brass cube). This

No Kant

129

is an accidental change whereas “aes sphaericum in aurum sphaericum” (a brass sphere changing into a gold sphere) is a substantial change, while the spherical shape, the accidental condition, remains the same. There was some attention given to the age-old problems of time and space, but the main thrust of the course seemed to be to show the difference between accidental and substantial change, and the purpose behind that was to prove that according to reason there existed no contradiction in the possibility of a thing changing in substance though not in accident. The obvious application to real life was to the Eucharist at Mass when Christians believe that at the time of consecration the substance of bread and wine are changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, while the accidents of bread and wine remain the same. For all of us, this requires a huge act of faith. What I learned in cosmology in 1951 over an extended period of three months was that rationally and theoretically there existed no philosophical contradiction in this belief. There were also other courses that we took, subsidiary or minor courses, all part of the program. We had at least two history courses, ancient and medieval, both interesting and given in English as all minors were. The text was Copleston, an excellent summary of every important philosopher starting with the Greeks. His texts were just beginning to come out in the early fifties and it was many years before he completed his series down to the present day. He was a wonderful Jesuit whom I met later when I spent a sabbatical in Oxford at the Jesuit college, Campion Hall. Peter Nash was our history professor. Born in India and raised in Vancouver, he was bright and eager, though difficult to understand at times with his Anglo-Indian accent. Experimental psychology was another minor, given by a German Jesuit who had escaped from Nazi Germany. He was well trained in the German scientific tradition but all I remember about the course was his distinction between “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft,” and his pronuciation of “juicy steak” as “juzy.” Texts of St Thomas was another minor given by the rapid-fire Fr Cass. A great deal of the day, in fact, was spent in the classroom. There was some free time before the ten o’clock morning class but apart from that respite, hour after hour was consumed in sitting

130

The Greater Glory

at our places in the classroom listening to the drum beat of Latin uttered in various accents or jotting down notes that often proved to be incomprehensible at exam time. The theory seemed to be that the professor was the all-knowing mentor and we were the recipients or potential reservoirs of the vast knowledge that he imparted. This system of inveterate class attendance was common at that time at most North American universities, and it has been happily shortened even in undergraduate programs, but our program was supposed to be on a graduate level. On the whole, it was not really graduate level material and treatment, even though we all received a Master’s degree after the three years. It would have been much more profitable to have spent more time in self-study and in writing papers; rather than the dreary and deadly draggedout hours spent in the classroom, it would have been much more stimulating and satisfying for most of the students, who were generally very bright. However, there was a strong presumption that young Jesuit scholastics could not be trusted to cover the required material on their own. There was the occasional paper asked for, and I remember writing one on “American Transcendentalism.” I wrote it mainly from the top of my head with only a few texts to refer to, having studied the transcendentalists, especially Emerson and Thoreau, years before at college. It was accepted as my Master’s thesis, but it was not Master’s material. In defence of this system I must say that at that time papers and theses were not considered important or fundamental to many university programs. As the years went on, there were presentations made by us students either to the class or to the Jesuit community. Class presentations covered a topic or thesis being studied in class, and apart from their being held at the deadly hour of 2:30 in the afternoon, I found them quite stimulating since after the topic had been covered by the student philosopher, questions could be posed by the class to the poor fellow already wearied by struggling through in Latin. A few of the questions were prepared beforehand and were answered by the presenter and then rebutted by the questioner in a series that could go on three or even four times in a series of Aristotelian syllogisms called a “chain,” each syllogism linked to the former one by a

No Kant

131

distinction made in the minor part of the previous syllogism. I was never very adept at “making chains,” but there were some who were incredibly proficient and could make as many as five links in this ancient medieval practice. What was fundamental, though, and considered the criterion of success or failure were the exams at the end of the year. The rating was on a scale from one to ten, below five indicating a failure, and exams were entirely oral before a board of three examiners, with a timer and arbitrator sitting in the centre. The latter not only marked the time but could also intervene for questions or assistance if he considered any examiner unfair in his questioning or harassing the examinee. This did not happen often as far as I know, but the precaution protected the examinee who was in a high state of tension even before he went in. First, the grilling was conducted in Latin, and in the first years this was a major hurdle, both in understanding the question and also in responding with a grammatical and articulate reply. I never slept soundly the night before any of these trials, and if you were far down in the waiting list it might be late in the afternoon before your turn finally came: the order of being examined was determined according to the selection of a letter of the alphabet. If I recall correctly, in the first two years there was a list of twenty-five theses you had to defend, and three were selected by the examiners, one each, to last ten minutes for a total of thirty minutes of cross-examination. The ordeal began with one examiner calling out in Latin the number of the thesis he wanted you to defend. Now learning philosophical terms and arguments in Latin was one thing, but grasping the Latin numerology in a high-pitched emotional state was another. Several times I started off on the wrong thesis. The procedure began with stating what was to be proved, the “status quaestionis,” and defining the terms. After this came the adversaries and the proof, but the examiner generally broke in with questions before you arrived at this point. Often the ten minutes would be spent in dealing solely with an adversary, usually Plato or Hegel or Kant, which was unfair as we never had access to the original texts of any one of them on the point at issue.

132

The Greater Glory

The thirty minute oral exam was a trying exercise as there was only one exam at the end of the year, and everything depended on that single performance. If you didn’t pass you had to repeat the year. The third-year exam was longer and more important, one hour covering fifty theses selected from the programs of the three years. Obtaining over six out of ten was essential, not only for obtaining the Master’s, but also and more importantly, in being placed when you went to study theology into what was known as the long or short course or program. With a mark of five or six you went into the short course, above that mark you got into the longer or honours program. The system of dividing the members of the Order into two distinct groups went back hundreds of years, and at this stage was based mainly on intellectual achievement in a single exam of one hour. Later in the theology program you could “descend” to the short course by not obtaining the requisite mark, but no matter how well you performed in the short course, I never heard of anyone being “raised” to the long course. After Christmas of my second year just before the term was to begin, I was called into the rector’s office and told very nicely that I would be hitting the trail, as he put it, and I would spend the rest of that year in one of the colleges teaching and helping to run the sports program. I was to leave the next day for Regiopolis College in Kingston, one of our smaller high schools that catered to boarding students, mostly from Montreal and Toronto, as well as to the local Catholic boys. It was my first test of obedience, of being sent off on a moment’s notice to carry out a duty completely different from the studies I had been engrossed in for the last eighteen months. That meant that I would miss my second term completely. It was to consist mainly of two lectures per day on rational psychology, to which I had been exposed some years before at St Paul’s College in Winnipeg. By a curious coincidence the course was to be given by the same Jesuit professor I had had in Winnipeg, so I found the move easy to accept. In fact I was glad to have a change as I hadn’t been feeling too well the first term. I arrived on the weekend before term began and received my assignments, teaching English in grade twelve, supervising the boarders when they were not in class, and helping to run the intra-

No Kant

133

mural sports program. The most daunting chore was trying to get ready a lesson plan on Macbeth which I was supposed to teach the following day. The next day arrived and I walked into a class of thirty-five boys, men, really, of eighteen or nineteen. I was twentyfour. I realized that the success of my teaching career was to be determined in that very first class, but just as I was about to launch forth on the first scene of Macbeth and carry out my little plan, a hand went up. The question wasn’t on the play, of course, but on the fact that since there had been trouble with the teacher during the whole of the first term there had not been an election of class officers. This was a ploy, of course, but also a test, yet I made the mistake of not postponing the election for a later time. I did say that we would take only thirty minutes of class time. The election went briskly, as it had obviously been planned, but the real test came after the tallying when the new president called out from his back seat that he would like to make a speech of acceptance. This was the time to assert my authority. He was a rugged kid of nineteen, not a pleasant type even from his tone of voice, but when I said no, that there would be plenty of time for that later, he stood up and almost demanded to say a few words to the class who had just elected him president. Staring at him straight in the eye I again said no. He began to move slowly forward up the aisle, uttering in a kind of importunate voice that all he wanted to do was to deliver a few words of thanks. It was a kind of high-noon re-enactment and it was now either he, a pipsqueak student, or I, the duly appointed teacher, who was going to win out. I was determined that it was going to be myself. As he advanced slowly up the aisle, I started to move down towards him. The room of thirtyfive men fell silent. As we moved closer I noticed from the whine of his voice and the leer on his face that he was probably more frightened than I was, and just as we almost brushed each other, still eye-ball to eye-ball, he slowly turned round and went back to his seat. It was over, and although my discipline in high school classes was never as firm as I would have liked, I had survived my first test. Later I would never have allowed myself to get cornered like that and would have sent him packing to the dean of discipline,

134

The Greater Glory

but I was totally unprepared for such defiance in my first class. After four and a half years of trying to control my emotions it was hard to release them when the occasion demanded it. Yet even then I realized that when the door closes it is either the teacher or the students that maintain control, and the students hate a teacher who loses it. The student body was almost equally divided between boarders and the local Kingston boys, somewhat over 200 in all. There didn’t seem to be any rivalry or animosity between the two groups but also there wasn’t much interaction between them except on the playing field. Regiopolis always fielded contending football, hockey, and basketball teams despite their small numbers and somehow or other we always managed to land a solid coaching staff for all sports. There was great rivalry in football between Regi, as it was known, and the local public high school, kcvi, Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute. One of my tasks as assistant director of athletics was to get everything ready for the big game on our campus, and that consisted, among many other things, of putting the lines down clearly and exactly. With tape measures and a machine that dribbled whitewash I strove to get the lines down as straight as I could and also to make sure the goal posts were solid and secure. The day came, the crowds surged on campus and stood on the sidelines as there were no bleachers. Fights took place until the police casually intervened, and Regi lost. Another of my jobs was flooding the rink. Since Kingston’s weather is variable and not conducive to preserving outdoor ice for much more than a few weeks at a time, it was a monumental task as I had to use our own fire hose and a hydrant outside the high fence surrounding the campus. The flooding had to be done at night when it was much colder. I couldn’t ask the students to help me because they were already in bed in their dorms, and that order could not be disturbed. So with fire hose on my shoulder I had to shinny over a ten-foot link fence, attach the hose to the hydrant, shinny back over the fence, and then attempt to hold and direct the powerful spray onto the surface. It was well after midnight when I finished, worn out and sopping wet. Then to bed for

No Kant

135

a few hours and up at 5:30 the next morning for prayers, Mass, and supervision of the boys in the chapel. The boys had Mass in the chapel during the week. They had to be present for seven o’clock, and I took over from the prefects of the dorms who had rousted them out of bed at 6:30. By 7:30 they were ready for breakfast, which was supervised by the dean of discipline. One morning after seeing them file down the stairs to breakfast I heard a loud noise from their dining room and I charged down to investigate. The place was in an uproar. On top of one of the tables two of the boys were slugging it out, surrounded by a 120 other boys cheering for one side or the other. They had stripped off the jackets they had to wear for chapel and cornflakes and milk were flying in all directions. Blood and bruises were already on their faces. I dashed in and, feeling supercharged with energy, I quickly peeled off the boys standing in front of them one by one, jumped up on the table myself, pried them apart, and grabbed both boys by the shirt, lifting them right off the table, one in each arm. They were so astounded that they lost all will to continue fighting. I was in excellent physical shape and they were only fourteen or fifteen, but my name didn’t suffer in the telling. The dean who was supposed to be on duty had fallen asleep in his chair near the chapel door. I became good friends with the other Jesuit scholastics, who included Neil McKenty (former cjad talk-show host in Montreal) and Lou Gibbons. They were farther advanced than I was, still being a lowly “philosopher.” They had finished their philosophy and were fully engaged in the next step of the Jesuit training called “regency.” For most this consisted mainly of helping out in the colleges, primarily by teaching and supervising the boys in all their extra-curricular activities. Some scholastics went directly on to the best universities for higher degrees but most were assigned to at least two years in the colleges. In general it proved salutary for most, a break from the tedious grind of studies, but not all were cut out to be teachers. Those who weren’t suffered horribly and were glad to see June come round. But regency was a kind of proving ground, first whether you were able to teach and hold a

136

The Greater Glory

high school class of adolescents, and secondly whether you could fit into the kind of life that so many would spend their life doing, teaching in the colleges and helping the local parish priests on the weekends. The scholastics, including myself, got to know the boys well as we were with them most of their waking hours, but what influence we had on them in the long run is difficult to say. We had to keep them in line, of course, but the mere fact of being with them day in and day out and listening to their small talk and little stories without pretence or judgment probably meant much more to them than gravely attempting to counsel them on their future, about which at that point most were hopelessly clueless. Fifteen minutes after lights out in the dorms, some of the dorm masters, if they were strict and competent like Neil, would leave their charges to their sleep and come down to the classroom building where the boys’ little canteen was located. I ran the canteen, the small profit from chocolate bars and drinks directed to buying athletic equipment. It was open for the students after lunch, before study in the afternoon, after supper, and for ten minutes after study at night before bed. I felt uneasy as a huckster, and also for extracting from the students, especially the younger one, their picayune allowances. But it was the only place where they could buy sweets, and in the absence of family they seemed to need the comfort of glucose. And it must be remembered that this was 1950 before the deleterious effects of glucose were known or at least published. In any event that tiny canteen grossed $10,000 a year, $3,000 of which was profit, all used for sports equipment. I say all the profit but I must qualify this because I supplied my fellow scholastics with anything they wanted, gratis. It was a small acknowledgment of the full-time dedication they all gave, and as it turned out they would only ask for an occasional bar or cigarette. The main reason for coming down to the pit, as the area was called, was simply to get in a little socializing after a grueling day. Our feet hadn’t been still since 5:30 that morning, and though even then we had no place to sit, we enjoyed getting together standing at ten p.m. for fifteen minutes or so and hashing over the day’s activities before having to go upstairs to the range, as Neil called it, to check on their charges in the dorms.

No Kant

137

We scholastics were a rather tight little group of five, and though our breaks were few we had fun when they came. One was getting the house car, which was rare and happened only during the short Easter interlude, and heading across the Peace Bridge to the U.S. for the day. The five of us would jam into the car and spend the day together, having lunch along the way or at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, a small Jesuit university. Another time we spent the day at the Sand Dunes near Bath, walking for hours on end along the beautiful beaches, which were completely deserted in those days. These little sojourns were infrequent as weekends during term were even busier than weekdays for us who had to supervise and “patrol” the boys back at the school both Saturday and Sunday. They were permitted to go to downtown Kingston on weekend afternoons for a movie or in the hopes of meeting a girl from the convent school. Our South American residents were generally more proficient in that regard. In late March of that year, 1952, my mother died in California. I have already mentioned the trouble I had in getting home, and I was disturbed by the time it took me to get back to Kingston in order to relieve my fellow scholastics who had doubled-up by taking my chores on top of theirs. Everybody was already fully booked, but no one ever complained to me afterwards. I was very attached to my mother and missed her greatly, especially her weekly letters which were full of news and wit, and although my Dad took over the home correspondence, he just wasn’t in the same class as my mother in the old tradition of writing entertaining and interesting personal letters. The students left immediately after their exams, but the house was empty only for a few days. There was to be a spiritual retreat for the priests of the Kingston archdiocese at our house, and we five scholastics had to prepare the rooms, carry beds to the classrooms, serve their Masses, and even serve tables. I didn’t mind as everyone felt that the annual retreat was important, but coming on the heels of a grueling term taking care of 120 boarders, it tested our endurance and our faith. The priests of Kingston and the surrounding area were friendly enough, but they seemed to expect us scholastics to wait on them hand and foot. This was literal in at

138

The Greater Glory

least one case where I had to pull an obese priest out of bed by means of a cord attached to his hand and wrist. In general, priests expected special treatment not only from their parishioners but also from anyone in authority, police, firemen, the mayor, etc., and they usually received it. This was especially true in cities like Boston and New York where anyone in a Roman collar waiting in line for some sports or cultural event was hustled to the head of the line by a smiling policeman. The city’s finest in Toronto and Winnipeg were much less benificent. After lugging beds out of the classrooms back to the dorms and cleaning up after the priests’ retreat, we scholastics were finally free to enjoy three weeks holidays at a Jesuit summer house on a lake in the Laurentians north of Montreal. It was a pleasant spot with wonderful swimming and even some boating. The main house and a kind of bunkhouse behind were simply furnished but quite adequate for us in our mid-twenties. There we renewed our acquaintance with our fellow scholastics from Loyola College in Montreal and St Mary’s in Halifax. We were about fifteen in all, a group large enough for volleyball and lots of bridge in the evenings. There was as yet no tv, but we were allowed to listen to the radio and a few managed to get the newspaper. It was very pleasant just sitting down on the dock by the water and resting after a hard year, exchanging anecdotes about experiences that didn’t seem to vary appreciably from place to place. We returned to Montreal after three weeks, much refreshed, and then we went through our annual retreat, which lasted the regular eight full days. As usual it was an uplifting experience but its rigor was in marked contrast to the relaxation of the three previous weeks. On 31 July, the feast day of St Ignatius, we all rushed to the bulletin board after breakfast to see where each man was to be posted for the following year. Most were completely unaware until that moment what or where his posting or status was to be. Not everybody, of course, was changed, but every year there was a prodigious amount of shifting about, not only of location but also of position. You had to be ready for anything, even to be sent to Borneo or Timbuktoo. It was an extraordinary example of Ignatian obedience and of the Jesuits’ mobility. You had to pack your

No Kant

139

few belongings, go to Father Minister to arrange reservations, and be off, perhaps that very day, to the ends of the earth with scarcely a chance to say goodbye to anyone, even though you might have worked and lived with your friends for ten or twenty years. My little “status” was simple, to return to Toronto to complete my studies in philosophy. In practice the changes usually came as a result of what you had revealed to the Father Provincial in your “Manifestation of Conscience” during his annual visit the previous winter. You might have told him that you felt that now was the time for you to proceed to doctoral studies in a particular field, as I did some years later, or that you felt that you had a special gift and the language skills for ministry in Afghanistan, or that you were unhappy, as was often the case, in the house where you worked, either with your work or with the superior in charge. If you felt that you just couldn’t carry out the change ordered, you could and should make what was known as “recourse” to the superior. In my experience in the 1960s and 1970s, the superior gave particular consideration to the “subject’s” own desires, thoughts, and feelings, but even then the final decision was his. I returned to Toronto at the end of August for my last year of philosophical studies. The program consisted mainly of two courses, natural theology and ethics. The first dealt with the knowledge of God that one had through reason alone, like the famous argument on the order and harmony of the universe. The argument I found most interesting, but that was supposed to be rejected, was the logical argument of St Anselm. A being greater than which nothing can be conceived cannot exist in the mind alone because if it existed only in the mind, then this being would not be greater than which nothing can be conceived, or in other words, the greatest being. But God is such a being. Therefore God exists. This argument, if I have it correctly, has been bruited about through the centuries, and has been rejected by most thinkers because it moves from the logical to the real sphere without cause, although recently I have seen it favourably discussed. This course was conducted by the same vibrant professor, John Cass, whom we had in ontology. In the interim he had lost none of his vigour,

140

The Greater Glory

and when excited about an arcane point, his speed and volubility would be accompanied by tiny jets of saliva shooting from his mouth. In the ethics course much time was spent on Marx and the irrationality of his system. The professor had first-hand experience of living under the repressive Marxist regime in Hungary, but his presentation was fair and balanced, despite his having being persecuted for many years in his homeland. He was the first of many Hungarian Jesuits who suffered a great deal there before making their escape to Canada. They were well trained in the Germanic tradition of scholarship and all spoke an intelligible Latin, as I recall. One of the more useful exercises in the seminary was the speech class, held once a week and conducted by an exacting and stern man who also taught theology. We called it the “Tones” class and it consisted of a variety of rhetorical practices, including, of course, the delivering of a sermon, but also of recitations, spontaneous speeches, etc. It was held in the refectory, a large echoing room, before the full gathering of the philosophers, who numbered about fifty. You had to prepare your piece meticulously because it was subjected to criticism by your fellow philosophers as well as by the master of Tones. It was exacting enough having to deliver your piece, but the criticism afterwards could be merciless. Two critics would be chosen at random to pronounce on the piece delivered, so you had to pay close attention not only to the subject of the orator’s talk but mainly to his presentation and delivery. Great stress was laid on “projecting one’s voice” and what was known as “flexing one’s buccinators.” Many, perhaps most, of our presentations at this stage were quite amateurish, but it was excellent and indispensable preparation for delivering sermons later on. The master was tough but just, and he would intervene if a critic got carried away or was overly severe. Once I had to prepare the “Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts” passage from Macbeth. I was Macbeth and Lady Macbeth was one of my fellow students, but being short and squat he was an unlikely Lady Macbeth, although he did have a high voice. For some reason I felt very nervous, so much so that my legs shook and played a tattoo on the floorboards, and I only got through it by fastening on how ridiculous we both

No Kant

141

must have looked to our peers dressed in Roman collars and black cassocks and spouting Shakespeare. Every week we had to sort our laundry. We were urged to keep clean and most were, but the piles of laundry for each person varied according to his standards of cleanliness. They consisted mostly of T-shirts, shorts, and socks, but some piles were unaccountably small. We changed our sheets once a week, towels too, all from common stock. The only items we could call our own were the little piles with our nametags sewn on. It was a real poverty, almost of indigence. If you felt that you needed three pairs of socks instead of two, you would wait in line to see Fr Minister at the appointed time. He would rarely deny a modest request, but I never found it easy asking permission for another T-shirt, much less a 15-cent bus ticket. For clothing, after obtaining permission, you would go off to the tailor shop to see Brother Tailor. He would rummage through dubious piles of very used clothing, and only occasionally would you be lucky enough to land a brand new T-shirt, though I must say that the used apparel was at least clean. For meticulous or sensitive people it always proved a great trial, not only the asking but also the getting, and it never became any easier. The lay brothers at the seminary were extraordinary men. Each had his usual assignments, kitchen, maintenance etc. but most seemed to be jacks-of-all-trades, ready to take on anything the minister would ask them to do. Occasionally they would try to enlist us in their chores but we weren’t allowed to help them without special permission. Besides, we had plenty to do ourselves, including cleaning our rooms and painting them if required, which I did every year. Apart from the Jesuit brothers, there was always a group of men who lived in the house and helped out according to their abilities. Why they were there no one ever asked but they appeared content, doing what they could in the running of the house. They weren’t tramps or nomads but helpers, some of whom were educated and beautifully mannered. I remember one older man, an Austrian, who swept the halls and corridors. Every time he passed my door he would bump his broom against the door as a sign that he was there, and then we would have a short chat in my halting German. What his story was I never

142

The Greater Glory

learned, but I got to like him very much and looked forward to his broom tapping. Three times a week we played sports in our large yard next to the shunting engines. Amid belching smoke and banging freight cars we played touch football in the fall, hockey in the winter, and baseball in the spring. It was serious business, especially when the two main opponents were teams from the philosophers and the mighty theologians who were two steps ahead of us in the course of studies, but these combats took place only on special occasions, on Feast Days, when we were permitted to talk to one another, fusion as it was called. The strategy for each game was carefully worked out by a few who were the real athletes. I never was quite in that category but I enjoyed every game immensely and found throwing myself into the fray a wonderful tonic and relaxer. I was a fast runner and I had a good pair of hands for touch football and baseball. All the games were strenuously contested, and many of the frustrations and pent-up emotions came out on the field; yet I must say that the only expletive I ever heard uttered, and it seemed to be standard, was the very innocuous “pot,” probably a mild variant of some stronger four-letter word. Once the game was over we were supposed to keep silence when we regained the house. We rarely did, arguing about who did or did not what and when. If caught talking, as I mentioned before, we would have to recite a formula of penance on our knees in the dining room before the whole community. This possibility was, however, insufficient to shut off the post-game analysis. Occasionally our parents would send us boxes of candy. We had to bring them to the minister who would allow us to share them with the rest of the group. This didn’t happen often but it was always a nice treat. One chap a few years ahead of me, who was given to complaining about his lot and being short-changed, was being handed the box of Laura Secord’s as it went round, and after fingering many different kinds finally chose one and was heard to say, “Just my luck, a chocolate cream and stale at that.” The end of our philosophical studies came in early June with an oral examination that covered the three-year program. I had to get up the rational psychology section that I had missed the previous

No Kant

143

year, but since the list contained only half a dozen theses on that subject which I had studied during my university career six or seven years before it was just a question of bringing back old material that I had almost forgotten. The board consisted of five professors, four of whom selected a thesis of his choice to be defended by the examinee for fifteen minutes. It was a long time to stay on a single topic speaking a strange tongue, but by that time I was quite proficient in getting the Latin tenses and cases correct and even grasping the questions posed. It was a tense atmosphere, however, but the tension evaporated once I started speaking and got into my stride. After a minute or so of narrative, that is stating the status quaestionis, the adversaries, etc., the examiners usually broke in with their objections. Some were standard and fairly easy to refute, but others could be very troubling and hard to answer. All in all, though, I found the examiners fair and ready to let me defend and prove the thesis. Occasionally they would cling to a point and seem not satisfied with the reply but usually they were willing to give us ample opportunity to pass and even to do well. I did fairly well, not brilliantly, but well enough to receive the degree and move on to the next stage, of teaching full-time in one of the colleges, what was known as regency.

8 “Get the Grass Seed”

after breakfast on July 31, 1953, once again we all ran to the bulletin board to see where we were to be posted the following year. I went down the list, divided according to the various Jesuit houses and colleges, and found my name among those assigned for the second time to Regiopolis College in Kingston. I wasn’t overjoyed as my experience there hadn’t been particularly pleasant, but at least I knew what to expect. My fellows were happy to get postings that would take them away from the seminary and into contact with what they thought was the real world in the colleges. For most it would mean teaching and supervising the boys in the dorms and athletic fields. For others it meant heading off to India where the Canadian Jesuits had recently taken over a mission in northern India from the Belgian Jesuits. The latter group had volunteered for the mission and were for the most part a very talented and even elite group of young men. The Jesuits always sent some of their best men to the missions, bringing very little with them except their ardour and their talents. There were many Christians in that area of India, converted to Christianity mainly through the efforts of a charismatic Belgian Jesuit in the late nineteenth century, Fr Constantine Lievens. He was a veritable St Francis Xavier, personally baptizing ten of thousands of Hindus in his lifetime, and apparently the faith of his converts continued through the generations. He certainly possessed a very special and singular charisma because over the years the Jesuits there and in other places had made few converts. I later .

“Get the Grass Seed”

145

spoke to several of my friends who returned to Canada periodically, and their work, extraordinary as it was, in running schools, orphanages, technical schools, and a dozen other noble enterprises on little money but with great love and enthusiasm, also yielded few converts to Christianity. This to me is a great mystery. It may be that the normal way in dealing with people ought to be on a level of education, bodily needs, and moral and physical training for life and its vicissitudes, and only then moving on to the free inner fortress of spirituality. My second stint at Regiopolis was less strenuous and somewhat more pleasant than the first. Though the older boys had already graduated, I knew most of the younger ones, especially the boarders. I was still in charge of the boys’ recreational time and intramural sports, but now I was also assigned to more teaching, this time to geography in both third and fourth high. Geography was just beginning to emerge as a study mainly of the physical aspects of the universe, the so-called “capes and bays” geography, to the economic and social aspects of the world. I had always been interested in the world beyond me, and at home we had an enormous globe of the world given to my father in the thirties by a friend of his in charge of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company in Canada. I can’t say how interesting my classes were but I know that I became intrigued with the subject and began to plan even then to ask for permission later to study for a doctorate in geography at Clark University, then reputedly the best in North America. I toyed with the idea for many years, though I ultimately chose what was much closer to my interest and love, the classics of Greece and Rome. At that time I was fascinated with maps and obtained for my classes several beautiful relief maps with the world’s mountain ranges and ocean depths marked in proportionate heights and depths, and my students seemed at least mildly interested in what lay beyond their immediate surroundings. I also taught grade twelve English again, the same selections of literature as before, as well as grammar and composition, the difference between “lie and lay” and their principal parts still providing a conundrum to most students.

146

The Greater Glory

The system that was supposed to be operative in Jesuit schools was called the “ratio studiorum” (a plan of studies), set down in the late sixteenth century by the then head of the order, Fr Claudius Aquaviva. It had been altered many times over the years in an attempt to adjust to modern methods of education, but it never really could be applied in English Canada because of the demands of the curriculum in the various provinces in order to graduate. However, that did not prevent one little college, Regiopolis in Kingston, from printing brochures that heralded this unique system as being in place there. It was a gross exaggeration and its author, the vice-rector, in his enthusiasm to attract students, would not have published it if he had taken the time to read the original documents and its revisions. The system of Jesuit education as outlined in the “ratio,” with its emphasis on the classics and the basic learning in all fields has had remarkable success over the centuries in the hundreds of Jesuit schools around the world and it continues in many countries to a lesser extent even down to the present day. With two notable exceptions I didn’t find the priests in the house overly friendly. The rector was aloof and demanding, and the vice-rector or minister fussy and demanding. The former was satisfied if he saw you busy at some chore, any chore, however humble: “Just carry a hammer down the front hall in front of the open door of his office,” was the suggestion of one of our older scholastics. The latter not one of us liked, nor did I know of any Jesuit who did. Once for some unaccountable reason, perhaps as his twisted notion of a test, he stopped me in the hall during a school day when I had a hundred duties to perform, to go out later to the store and buy some grass seed. First, I wasn’t to be free to carry out that picayune task until five that afternoon after my teaching was done and supervising the boarders before they went into study. Second, I had no access to a car – although there were several cars at his disposal – and would have had to walk at least a mile and a half downtown for the purchase and be back for my supper to be on duty with the boys when they finished their supper at six-thirty.

“Get the Grass Seed”

147

The upshot of it was that in the midst of a completely full day the purchase of the grass seed passed utterly from my mind. From the far side of the campus at 5:45 I heard my bell, two long and two short, being incessantly and imperiously rung. As I hurried across the campus, I suddenly remembered the fatal order, “Get the grass seed.” I appeared at the minister’s office and he was in a high state of anger and excitement. “Where is the grass seed?” I apologized and said that it had slipped my mind in the course of a busy day and I would try to get it the following day. In high dudgeon the little man launched into a wild tirade that rang the gamut from my utter lack of responsibility to being unsuitable for the Jesuit life, even to the point of leaving the Order as I couldn’t seem to be able to perform even the simplest tasks or follow the simplest orders. By this time I was angry, but I had the sense to hold back as he had the power to suggest to the higher superiors that I should serve an extra year of teaching or else be dismissed from the Order for not fulfilling my duties and being insubordinate as well. I felt the whole matter to be totally unfair. Why he should ask me to carry out this order in the middle of a busy school day and why he would get so worked up on such a trivial matter was beyond my comprehension. He finally finished his harangue and dismissed me, both of us going in late for supper. The small group of Jesuits at dinner immediately noticed that we were both extremely upset. The other scholastics, of course, picked it up but though they sympathized they were sadly helpless even if they had wished to intervene. However, one of the older fathers surmised what had happened, pulled me aside after supper, and then marched right into the minister’s office and had it out with him. The incident was not brought up again, but the minister’s injustice rankled long after it happened. We lived in a poor house but it didn’t have to be such a tight ship. Having to work hard was quite acceptable and even desirable, but it was the mean-spiritedness in the process that made it hard to pull together. Then there was the separation of the fathers from the scholastics, and both from the brothers, even in that small college. We scholastics were not permitted to go into the father’s

148

The Greater Glory

recreation room, which was very comfortable, unless invited, and we had no room of our own in which to congregate; the so-called grades were quite artificial in a tiny college and militated against fraternal harmony. One of the few likeable priests in the group was Fr John Moore. He was of Irish Ontario stock, an excellent teacher, and above all a great friend of the scholastics. If he became aware of any mistreatment or injustice he would go immediately to the superior’s office and present a strong case, as he kindly did in the grass seed episode. Being one of the elders of the community and what was known as a consultor to the rector, he was generally listened to, though not always. There were only three brothers in the house, and they worked from early morning to late night in keeping the house clean and the furnaces and machines going. I got to know them well, especially Brother O’Gara, straight from Ireland, who could and often did recite fifty and more verses of many a poem and ditty in a single burst. Being in charge of the boys’ recreation time I was still theoretically responsible for them even though they were supposed to be away from the campus on Saturday afternoons. One Saturday I thought that the boarders had all gone downtown for their afternoon off and I lay down after lunch for a rare nap until they would return. A bare five minutes later I heard a rumpus just outside my window. I dashed out into the gravel courtyard to see several of the older students who lived in Spratt House which was nearby and for whom I was not responsible, excitedly claiming that there had just been a shooting and that the student who had fired the gun was up in his room and threatening to do away with himself. I ran up the stairs and into his room and found him huddled in a corner with the gun on his lap. I snatched the gun and tried to calm him down and tell me the story. Against the rules of the school he had a gun in his possession and had been pointing it out his window, thinking that all the younger students had gone to town. He had begun to take target practice at an old wooden bench on the other side of the campus. The bench had a high back that was turned away from his sight about a hundred yards away, and suddenly, after several of his 22 bullets had ripped through the wooden back, a figure had risen

“Get the Grass Seed”

149

up above the back and then had pitched forward onto the ground. A young South American boy had been sleeping on the bench and had been hit by at least one bullet. By this time an ambulance and the police had arrived and the victim was carried to the ambulance and rushed to the hospital. The police questioned the shooter and soon realized that the incident had been a tragic accident, but the drama was far from over. Doctors operated on the young boy that night and only after several hours were they able to extract the bullet, which had lodged close to his heart. The parents were summoned from South America and the boy lingered most of the summer in the hospital in Kingston but he finally recovered and returned home. Being a shy, friendless, and almost simple child, he had decided on his own to remain on the grounds that Saturday and not accompany the others downtown; the day being warm he had fallen asleep on the ill-fated bench at the other end of the campus. No charges were ever laid, the school was not sued, and no one was reprimanded except the older boy who had fired the gun. He was not under my jurisdiction, but the younger one was, technically speaking, and I felt very badly both for him and his family for many months afterwards. One of the more unseemly matters that I came upon during my stay there was the undercover activities of one of the cleaners in the school building. He was an older man with a wife and grownup family but he took it upon himself to spy upon the boys and even open their lockers to pry lubriciously into what he might find inside. His great discovery was to uncover a pornographic magazine that one of the boys must have hidden there. He then reported the number of the locker to the dean of discipline, but fortunately the dean reprimanded him and forbade him to open lockers and ordered him to mind his own business. At this he was quite upset, thinking that he was performing a useful role, all the while completely oblivious to his own pruriency. In mid-summer I received another change, this time to St Paul’s College in Winnipeg, to finish the remaining two years of my regency. It was thoughtful of Father Provincial to send me back to my hometown after a seven-year hiatus, but there turned out to be another reason. I was to attend the University of Manitoba

150

The Greater Glory

for a degree in education. If I were to teach in one of our high schools it would be helpful to have a professional teaching degree, so I enrolled in the Faculty of Education on the Fort Garry Campus. I was glad to return to studies but as it turned out most of the program consisted of a few lectures on class and school management and mainly of practice teaching at many of the public elementary and high schools of the city. I visited and attempted to help out in more than a dozen schools, having first been assigned to a competent teacher for advice and encouragement. I found the teachers very friendly and helpful and the experience rewarding. At most of the schools I visited the standards of teaching and discipline were high, a real credit to the public school system of Winnipeg. Most of the classes on the Fort Garry campus and the visits to the schools were held in the mornings, but I didn’t have the leisure of the afternoon off as I had to rush back by bus into town, eat my lunch on the bus, and be in class myself by 1:40. Most of my preparations took place on the bus between mouthfuls of dry sandwiches, but I didn’t mind as I was eager to get into class for my grade ten geography or English class. I enjoyed both my teaching and my stay at St Paul’s High School on the old Ellice and Vaughan campus downtown. We had a sensible and friendly rector and minister. Unlike at Regiopolis, we scholastics were welcomed into the priests’ recreation room and in general were treated like co-workers, working together towards a common goal. It was a better and happier school, a welcome change after being treated like servants, loaded down with chores like packhorses, with no hint of approval or recognition. I think that my fellow scholastics shared my views on both Regiopolis and St Paul’s, severe in one place, pleasant in the other. A few tried to buck the system at Regiopolis but most of us were intimidated by the absolute power of the rector and vice-rector, fearing that the word might be passed on to Father Provincial in Toronto and the “deviants” rewarded by having a fourth year of regency tacked on to the marathon program and told that unless they shaped up they would be dismissed before getting into their theological studies. This didn’t happen often, but it happened at

“Get the Grass Seed”

151

Regiopolis to one of us when I was there; it was a salutary warning that if you conformed all would be well, if not, you were out. At St Paul’s, besides teaching I had many other chores, various and sometimes challenging. One was running the little student orchestra that was called on to play at school functions. I liked music but had absolutely no training in musicology, yet I was asked to assemble a group for the next public school function. Luckily there was a student in one of my classes who not only played several instruments but also had directed his own band, so with me in the background we turned out a small ensemble that in the end did everybody credit with pieces like “When the saints come marching in,” and of course a rousing rendition of the school song, “Hail, o hail to old St Paul’s.” Another little challenge for which I was entirely unprepared was directing the boys’ singing in their monthly chapel periods. While the organ pumped loudly in the choir loft, I sawed the air with my left hand as I stood on the altar rail steps, all the time keeping watch for any tomfoolery by the 240 boys, especially those lurking in the back pews. Then there was the yearbook. One of the other teachers was in charge, but I was asked by the rector to organize a group of boys to go into the city and solicit ads for the sake of solvency. I managed to get an eager group who did the job in less than two weeks. As at Regiopolis, I was in charge of the boys’ recreation periods. It was football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball and volleyball in the spring These were not school teams nor even intra-mural but the rambunctious and informal pick-up games that boys revel in, while learning the skills and give-and-take of the various sports. I also coached my class football team to a couple of victories and many defeats. Through all this I got to know every boy in the school, and I never encountered one that I didn’t like. In my teaching, however, I made many mistakes, especially in matters of discipline. I always found it nerve-wracking attempting to maintain order, and unlike university lecturing I had to keep an alert and constant eye on possible disturbances. In large classes impish students would soon discover any small chink in one’s armour and exploit it to the full, often taking others and even the

152

The Greater Glory

whole class with them through the opening. You had to crack down hard before anything serious developed, but at the same time you had to be fair, though firm, and not overdo it. When irritated, I occasionally misjudged the seriousness of the problem and overreacted. I can still vividly remember, with regret, one occasion during a droning afternoon class my warning a student who was talking. When he persisted, I ordered him to stay after class. My punishment was childish and unprofitable, writing out lines, and since the grade ten boy was fully grown for his age, he resented the absurd punishment. He sat alone in the classroom with me up at the raised teacher’s desk, and after writing a few lines he dropped his pen and began to glare at me. He kept on glaring and I quickly realized that he was trying to employ the old trick of defiance by staring me down. I wasn’t sure what I should do next but I had no intention of letting him out-stare me. We glared at each other for at least five minutes, and then finally he lowered his gaze, shook his head and simply came out with an “agh.” It was a stupid clash of wills and I should never have allowed it to happen. It was unsettling for both of us, and I think that he resented it for long afterwards. During these two happy years I was permitted to visit my family occasionally. During term I was too busy but at Christmas and Easter I was able to drop over and see my father, who was still living in the large house on Yale Avenue. He was finding it very hard living alone without my mother, who by this time had been dead for several years. His meal preparation was minimal but my sister Monina, who had five children of her own by this time, managed to pop in every day and kept him supplied with large pots of chili which he loved and ate for supper every night. He never tired of it, and even his lunch was invariable, a tin of sardines with dried figs for dessert. He never wanted or asked for anything else. He took two walks every day, one before lunch, and another later in the afternoon. He read the paper after breakfast and had cut down his cigarette intake, “British Consuls,” to one per day, but he kept up his pipe smoking to the end. Until his friends died, he drove out to St Charles for golf twice a week, maintaining that routine until he was eighty-five. He also played a good hand of

“Get the Grass Seed”

153

bridge and was ready for a game any time three others could be rounded up. At this time I got to know my older sister Monina and brothers Buzz and Que much better than when I was a child. By then they all had large families and I enjoyed not only visiting them but getting to know their children. I became very close to them and also to my in-laws, Pat, Dave, and Shirlee, and missed them all when I finished my stint at St Paul’s. It was then that I realized how much I wanted to become a father myself, but I still felt that I wanted to be a priest and carry out whatever role the Order would assign me after ordination. The time of regency came to a close in the summer of 1956 and again I was packed off to the seminary in Toronto to begin my four years of theological studies. I was now thirty years old and had been in the Order for nine years.

9 The “Ad Grad”

so began the second-last and longest part of the marathon course of studies, the four-year program of theological studies. The first session took place in early September with our assembling in the cavernous chapel for the professors to renew their vow against the teaching of “modernism” in their classes. Little is said or thought about modernism today but it was a movement within the Catholic Church, especially in France, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth that criticized, among other things, the Church’s interpretation of scripture, the Church as an institution, and its method of teaching theology. Some of its main proponents were Alfred Loisy and Maurice Blondel in France, Friedrich von Hugel in Germany, and GeorgeTyrrell in England, and many of the clerics teaching these views were excommunicated from the Church and the movement condemned in 1907. After they had received seeming encouragement from a previous Pope, Leo XIII, it was harsh treatment of men who were trying to change the stance of the Church on many issues, some of which are accepted today, and it made the professors in my time wary of the latitude they could take, particularly in the interpretation of the Bible. After convening in chapel we went to our first class, but it was short in the long tradition of scholastic teaching, lasting only a minute or two, “schola brevis.” The main thrust of our theological studies was dogmatics, an intensive investigation of the doctrines of the Catholic Church over the centuries. Next in line was sacred scripture, which was to

The “Ad Grad”

155

be taught only in the final two years, whereas dogma courses were to be given five days a week for the full four years. Next in importance was the study of moral theology and canon law in the first two years, followed by an array of ancillary courses that ranged from ecclesiastical history to a summer course in classical Hebrew. Since I had done reasonably well in my philosophy exams, especially the final one-hour oral, I was enrolled in the “long course,” whereas those who had performed only tolerably well in that examination were placed in the “short course.” Thus in the dogma classes, we were divided into two groups in two separate classrooms, the long course students presumably destined to delve more deeply and thoroughly into the intricacies of the theological spectrum. It was, all in all, a humiliating and pernicious system, seemingly separating the “brights” from the “less brights,” though that wasn’t the case at all. Many of the brightest – and best – students had for various reasons not passed that ill-fated oral exam: some might have had a bad day through nervousness, illness, testy examiners, unlucky questioning, and so forth. Everything had hinged on that one hour: no other previous examinations, no presentations, no papers, no scrupulous and prolonged preparation mattered a whit. Besides, you could fail your dogma exam in any one of the first three years of theology and so be “reduced” even for the last year to the so-called short course. That happened to many of my fellow students who, having succeeded up until then in their academic performance, were rudely plucked even at this late stage in their second or third year dogma examination. I remember the evening clearly on the final day of the exams when each of us was called down to the rector’s office and notified of his results. As each of my friends returned to the recreation room he would give the sign, thumbs up or thumbs down, according to his results. It was tense and unnerving for all of us, since an inadequate mark in any dogma examination for any year meant that you could not become a member of the chosen group that governed the Jesuits, the professed fathers of the Order. Furthermore, if you failed your final two-hour oral exam at the very end of the four years, the “ad gradum” examination that covered the seven years of philosophy and

156

The Greater Glory

theology, you would also be placed among the group known as “spiritual coadjutors.” The cleavage between long course and short course was not to be discussed, but in my experience it was always there just below the surface, and it required a high degree of humility not to let it rankle if there was reason to doubt its validity. In the wide variety of courses there was also a wide variety of professors, all Jesuits, most from Canada, but also some from various countries, the United States, Hungary, Germany. The dogma classes were all conducted in Latin, and it was amazing to hear the differing intonations of the ancient tongue. Most spoke excellent Latin grammatically, especially the Hungarians, who had a fine classical tradition and whose Parliament used it in the nineteenth century, but their intonation was very different from that which our Canadians used. A certain Father Bekesi spoke so fast that several of us tried to calculate the number of words he uttered each minute by recording each word by a dot in our note books. I’ve forgotten the number per minute but it was at least twice the usual pace and as a result it was hard to grasp what exactly he was trying to say. Another Hungarian, a former head of the Order in Hungary, tried to overcome the barrier between teacher and students by going down the aisles, stopping at one’s desk, bending down and looking into our faces and asking, “Magister Casey, quid putas de hac re?” (Mr Casey, what opinion do you have on this matter?) To prevent these incursions, we used to push the desks tightly together . He was a kindly old soul who had stood up to the communists and been clapped into prison for years. These Hungarians, including five or six fellow students, were courageous men who mostly had made their escape during the 1956 uprising by walking across country and, half starving, slipped over the border into Austria. By the time they arrived in Canada they were still very short of carbohydrates and a few would load up on jams and desserts to refurbish their systems. An American Jesuit from New York gave us a course “de Deo Creante” (God as Creator). All I can remember of his course was his Brooklynese rendering of the letter “a” in Latin of phrases like “massa chaotica” (the chaotic mass of the universe).

The “Ad Grad”

157

The courses I liked best were given by a Canadian named Fr Fred Crowe on the Trinity and the Incarnation, “de Deo Trino” and “de Deo Incarnato.” He was a disciple of Lonergan and made the material interesting by placing the articulation of Christian belief and its aberrations in a historical and even geographical context. Little maps on the board showing the location of Nicaea, Nicomedia, Mopsuestia, etc., and his clear and orderly presentation of mind-bending concepts enlivened his lectures immensely. Another chap who had a Master’s degree in classics from the University of Toronto was known to us as “luculentissimus” (very fine and distinguished) for his excellent Ciceronian delivery. One Canadian Jesuit would begin his courses with a flourish and fine promise, and then after two lectures would plead sickness and retire to his room, the sign not-be-disturbed being a white hand-towel on the door. Somehow the course material was made up, but I can’t remember how – just another problem for our kindly dean. The lecture load was heavy, and the only time to prepare or read about the subject material was before ten for the morning classes and before five for the late afternoon lectures. Even if I had been able to read beyond what was delivered in class, I was generally worn out after so many lectures. However, I would go over my notes, such as they were, after each class, but until our third and penultimate year, access to the library was limited as it was during our philosophy years by the necessity of having to go through the card index and getting permission from a cautious and stingy librarian to take out a book. Then as before it was difficult to judge the worth of a book by thumbing through index cards. The idea behind this restricted access, as I have mentioned before, was that not only did the professor present all you needed to know on a subject but also it was dangerous to allow a not yet fully formed scholastic to roam about a theological library well stocked with what were considered books of a heretical or heterodox nature. Once the long course of studies was completed, we would be accounted as fully formed, and finally able to venture into any library and pass critical judgment on any and every book we cared to read. But at that time we were not fully formed, although I was

158

The Greater Glory

thirty-two years old. A slight streak of dawn appeared in 1958 when an about-face was declared and almost free access to our library was permitted. Once access was granted it was like going into a new world: a veil was lifted. I immediately felt more mature, more responsible, and if I could find the time, eager to find out what the so-called adversaries had to say in their own texts – if I could slip them through the librarian. Next after dogma and scripture were moral theology and canon law. These were very intensive courses about the rights and wrongs of every conceivable human action and their application to the laws of the Catholic Church. Perhaps to make sure that we understood everything clearly and correctly, they were both conducted in English, like the “minor” courses, which were also conducted in the vernacular. They were considered of paramount importance because they were a direct preparation for the hearing of confessions after ordination. We had to be ready to give snap judgments on any problem that people in the confessional might bring up, and not only to judge the gravity of the sins mentioned and to ascertain whether in fact there had been any misdeed at all but also and principally to give absolution, to offer advice on sometimes very complicated material, and above all to encourage and support any person who had the courage and humility to confess his or her sins to a man in a cramped and stuffy cubicle. It was an awesome responsibility for the priest to say and do the right thing, and to Catholics with faith an opportunity to ease their consciences of a burden they repented of and wanted to shed. Catholics believe that the priest is an instrument for God’s granting a removal of their sins. Whether the easy access to confession for Catholics implies the weakening of the deterrent to sin that we all need, I will leave to the psychologists. The sacrament of penance has a long and controversial history, but in some form, whether private or public as it was in the early days of Christianity, it has been practised throughout the ages, and in any age it always requires an extraordinary act of faith, both for the penitent and the priest. Our moral professor was just back from Rome and was a very bright addition to the faculty. He was in a sense too bright because

The “Ad Grad”

159

he would come out with the answer almost before you could finish asking a question. He had two doctorates, one in moral theology and another in canon law, both obtained, I was told, in three years. It was said that during those three years in Rome he would sleep from 2 to 5 twice a day, once at night, and again in the afternoon. He knew the 2,400 canons of church law by heart. Our canon law professor was an entirely different man. He was a very cultured person, a humanist, and why he was in that field only blind obedience alone could explain. He should have been teaching literature, but he did succeed in making every lecture scintillating and even memorable. Some of us kept notebooks of his utterances which we called “guberniana,” a variant of “gubernator,” “a pilot or director” as he had been rector of the seminary at one time. One of his favorite expressions was “to run roughshod with a coachand-four over all canonical legislation.” He was a very kind man with a wonderful sense of humour and had a long experience in directing nuns and priests. The code of canon law was a prickly array of laws, which we all had a copy of in Latin on our desks. It had been published in one book during the First World War after many years of distilling the thousands of rules and regulations that had accumulated in church law over the past centuries. Eugenio Pacelli, long before he became Pope Pius XII in 1939, had been one of the brilliant formulators of this compendium. Our professor, Fr Elliott McGuigan, was able to bring out the benign aspects of this formidable list of do’s and don’t’s, mostly the latter, through his knowledge of the spirit and ethos behind them. He spent much time on those canons that provided either favourable interpretations or legitimate loopholes of the laws. These few canons made such an impression on me that I can still remember their numbers as well as their content. The two examples that I recall may have little relevance and perhaps little interest today, and the old canon law code of 1917 has been completely superseded by a simpler new code, but at that time, not so long ago, knowing the more benign numbers could prove very helpful in an age beset and controlled by regulations. The first was enshrined in Canon 209 and dealt with what was known as common error or doubt when the church neatly and

160

The Greater Glory

fortuitously would grant to the priest the permission, or what was known as the “jurisdiction,” to hear confessions, “ecclesia supplet.” Then as now a priest could hear confessions only through the permission of the bishop of the diocese in which he resided. If you were in a church in another diocese and had no permission from that bishop, what would happen if someone approached you and asked to go to confession? Well, you would in fact possess such a permission to hear the person’s confession because he or she would assume that you had the local bishop’s permission, the church supplying you with the required jurisdiction without asking for it. Another less intricate example was contained in the famous canon 2254. In a rather urgent case, “casus urgentior,” any priest could give absolution to any person who had been under some severe censure of the bishop if in withholding absolution the person would suffer greatly or if there was no time to obtain the removal of the censure. For example, on the morning of a wedding, the priest could grant absolution, all obstacles removed, and then blithely proceed with the wedding. Then there was the wonderful “epikeia” that allowed you to presume a benign or favourable interpretation of the law according to what you could ascertain to be the wishes and intent of the lawgiver when he formulated the law in the first place, and then proceed with good conscience to do what might seem contrary to the letter of the law in question. All this undoubtedly sounds remote and completely irrelevant, but then, fifty years ago, it was not. In keeping with those times it was very important to know what precisely you could or could not do in helping the person concerned to remove his or her sin and possibly church censure, and also to be careful not to be severely reprimanded or undergo church censure yourself. These censures were of two kinds, automatic (“latae sententiae”) that is, whether you were aware of them or not you were guilty, and second nonautomatic (“ferendae sententiae”) that is, to be determined afterwards by an ecclesiastical judge or higher authority. They were to be avoided at all costs. Priests knew about them, or were supposed to know about them, and of course the laity didn’t, and although most of these condemnations applied not to the clergy but to the

The “Ad Grad”

161

vast number of Catholics at large, it was a great blessing that they were in general unaware of their hideous severity. In the first year before the new man arrived, the moral course was conducted by another professor in Latin. Father Edward Sheridan was a large, surly man with an intimidating presence who rarely smiled and who seemed eager to crack down on any breaches in house discipline. I ran afoul of him several times, once, as I have mentioned, when I was caught talking in the house after a hockey game and administered a public penance, and another time during my important tenure as class beadle. The function of class beadle consisted mainly of keeping an eye on the time in class and tapping on the desk when the class period was supposed to be over. Another function, much to my chagrin, was to dismiss the class after waiting for five minutes if the professor did not turn up. On one occasion, when this professor did not appear, I waited the prescribed time and dismissed the class of fifty students who were happy to avoid one or any lecture. The smart, and the charitable, thing would have been to go down and check in his room to see if he were there and had forgotten the time, but I didn’t. No sooner had I and fifty others returned to our rooms than a loud knock echoed on my door. There he was, filling the frame and blazing with anger. He demanded that I go door-to-door and summon every body back to class. When they were all rounded up and in their seats in the classroom, he proceeded to excoriate me for five minutes before the assembled multitude. His public tirade went far beyond the unintended misdemeanor. He wasn’t called “grumble guts” for nothing. I must say, though, that his course was thorough and well organized. With a green celluloid visor pulled well down over his glowering brow he meticulously explored every aspect of every possible human activity, whether some action was sinful or not sinful, whether it was doubtful or not doubtful. It went on forever. In confession, after it was determined whether an action was sinful or not, it was essential to ascertain whether a person confessing something was sorry for what he or she had done and what advice to give before absolution could be granted. The first was almost

162

The Greater Glory

automatic given the fact that the person had come to confession in the first place but the second was sometimes difficult, especially in matters of justice: for example, what and how much a person had to pay back to the victim. On the subject of justice and its various kinds, “Thou shalt not steal,” we spent at least two months. Although there were little tags in all these matters that seemed to soften the severity of the laws like “parvum pro nihilo reputatur” (a small matter is to be considered as nothing), there were other, almost freakish, prescriptions, such as that a priest sinned only venially if he allowed the light in the sanctuary lamp of his church to go out occasionally, but mortally (that is, grievously) if he allowed it to remain unlit for a month or more. The subject of equivocation, a type of mental reservation, was treated in the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The Jesuits have been accused of using this little dodge for centuries, which was no doubt greatly exaggerated, but it can be and is used quite legitimately. It is commonly used in the case of a visitor or caller who asks for someone in the house and is answered that the person is not at home when he or she is really there, with the implication for anyone with sensitivity that the person is not at home to receive visitors. The sixth commandment was carefully treated not only because of its importance in everybody’s life but also because in place at the time was the stern proscription that no act against the commandment could be considered as light matter (venial) but everything was grave or grievous, “nulla parvitas materiae.” I was told that in some seminaries when dealing with the morality of the sixth commandment it was considered such a delicate and provocative matter that the priest professor would come into class holding a lighted candle and dressed in a surplice and biretta. In one of our classes treating the morality of sex our rector was inveighing against the immorality of using any birth control methods except abstinence or the rhythm method and that it was clearly against the natural law when I dared to express the doubt that I could not grasp the unnaturalness of using condoms. He reprimanded me severely in the presence of the whole class, asserting that it was obvious that birth control was against the natural law and that I

The “Ad Grad”

163

should have been able to see the validity of the argument. I didn’t but I couldn’t press my case as it would have been considered insubordinate. Ten years later he himself must have seen the weakness of his argument because he helped in drawing up a document that permitted birth control in certain circumstances. In the last two years, in place of the complexities and absurdities treated in the moral classes we turned to the more benign study of sacred scripture. There were two professors, one for the Old Testament, the other for the New, both brilliant men who had taken their doctorates in Rome at the Biblicum, a Roman college for scripture studies run by the Jesuits. Besides knowing all the ancient languages, they were well versed in the recent movements that existed in biblical studies, especially among the Germans, that took into consideration not only the interpretation of the text but also other factors such as archaeology and the other writings of the time. The Bible, though a sacred text, should be understood in the way the authors of the time intended it to be taken, not always literally but in the way other histories and sacred texts were understood at that period. In the light of the condemnation of modernism fifty years before, this was delicate ground on which our professors had to tread softly, but both their courses provided extraordinary insights into the meaning of the Bible as intended by the evangelists and the other authors of the various books in both Testaments. Besides, this study provided an understanding of the main figure in the New Testament, Jesus Christ, as well as of many others in the Old. Here was the true life-blood of theology, the study of the life of Christ Himself and His teachings, and not the colder and more remote analysis and interpretation of those teachings developed later that formed the basis of dogmatic theology. In our third year of theology one of the requirements for the master’s degree in theology was a thesis. With so many courses and so much material to cover in the four years, it was not considered of great importance, and a paper of twenty to thirty pages was considered adequate, more in the nature of a major essay. I was given the topic taken from a question of St Thomas, whether the prophets saw the essence of God when they were prophesying.

164

The Greater Glory

It was an esoteric topic, but I found it interesting because the idea had long been attributed to an early Christian named Dionysius who had been converted by St Paul and then had become the first bishop of Athens in the first century. Eventually the real author was identified as a mystic theologian of the Neo-platonic school living in the early sixth century named Dionysius – hence the name “Pseudo-Dionysius” – who held that the human soul can achieve a mystic union with God through a long process of “unknowing” until finally it reaches a knowledge of the ineffable Being itself and sees His essence. I found some material in the seminary library on this obscure individual and topic, but I lacked an important book that had been referred to in the other material that I had available. I had no access to the library at the Medieval Institute at the University of Toronto, but I asked one of my friends, who was studying classics at the university at the time, to take out the book on his card. Giving ample credit to the author in my footnotes, I used the book extensively in my paper, typed up the manuscript and turned it in to the professor concerned. To my consternation he called me in and accused me of pretending to use a book to which I could not have had access. I told him how I obtained the book, but he didn’t believe me, and he certainly did not apologize. I hoped that that kind of mistrust was not common, but I became a little more wary of the sincerity of those in authority when they know that they are in the wrong. Perhaps he admitted his error by giving me an “A” on my thesis, but I didn’t discover it until years later when I had to ask for my transcript. Incidentally, the answer I obtained, helped along by St Thomas and the controversial book, to the question whether the prophets did in fact see the essence of God, was no. The main thrust of our life then was our program in theology, but underlying everything and of far greater importance was our spiritual life. Each morning we were up at 5:30, in chapel by 5:55, and then back to our room for an hour of meditation on some spiritual topic that we had chosen and prepared for the night before in a fifteen-minute period called “points.” Generally, the contemplation concerned a scene from the life of Christ with

The “Ad Grad”

165

emphasis on one of His virtues, humility, patience, charity, etc., and it was supposed to end up with a practical application to one’s immediate life. It was not easy staying awake at that hour, even kneeling on a wooden prie-dieu, so you had to keep changing positions, standing or sitting, the latter being more conducive to nodding off than the other two. I even tried standing on one leg to stay awake. At 6:50 we went back to chapel for Mass, or served the Mass of one of the thirty priests in the house. Then at noon before lunch and again in the evening we were to examine our consciences for fifteen-minute sessions. The whole time was not to be spent at picking at our consciences but to converse with Christ as we knew Him from our meditations. I liked this time much more than the long dragged-out hour of meditation at the crack of dawn, not only because it was shorter but mainly because it provided a quiet time to re-orient myself twice a day and remind myself of the purpose of my life. Then there was supposed to be a short time given to spiritual reading from some book designed to lift or salve one’s spirits. Of course, there was also the annual eight-day retreat that was dedicated entirely to prayer and introspection, a shorter form of the thirty-day retreat of Ignatius’ “spiritual exercises,” the entire time to be spent in complete silence. In fact, even in ordinary times talking in the house was forbidden except during the two recreation periods after lunch and supper. If you did talk you would be breaking your recollection, as it was called. The purpose of these multiple exercises was to keep your soul unclogged from mundane matters, to draw closer to Christ and so advance a step farther on the rocky road to perfection. To guide and encourage us along this road but also to avoid mishaps, a priest, called a “spiritual director,” was assigned to each one of us. In such an intense pursuit of perfection, the role of the director was extremely important, but in my experience only a few had the skill and discernment necessary to direct a person with any degree of wisdom. The man assigned to me had been the provincial of the English Canadian Jesuits and he singularly lacked insight into human souls. He simply questioned me about the performance of my spiritual duties and left it at that. Once I did

166

The Greater Glory

bring up my unhappy experience as a boy with the Jesuit parish priest, and he replied that apart from one case, he had never heard of any other instance in his long life as a Jesuit when anyone in the Order had been accused of such a heinous crime. He was either naïve or conveniently forgetful. However, if we couldn’t get on with the man assigned, we could look around for another, and after asking around I was lucky enough to land onto a grumpy but very kind and perspicacious priest who guided me over many bumps and through many shoals. With the intensity of the studies and the interior life that was demanded by the regime we were all leading, my health began to be affected, first by headaches, then by an inability to focus on my work. After discussing the problem with my spiritual director, I agreed to his suggestion to slow down a little and just attend class, take a few notes there, and leave it at that. I had reached the point where I was doing very little outside class, and since ordination was coming up at the end of my third year I focused on preparations for that and kept the studies to a minimum. The respite was beneficial, and by the time ordination came I began to feel better. Helpful too was a small part I took in a play we theologians put on called “Caesar’s Friend.” It was a grandiose undertaking and took place in the seminary library that had a stage at the far end. Our heavy rink boards were lugged in to make a dais for Pilate (Caesar’s friend), and when the curtains opened with Pilate standing on his dais, the six-foot-three Sean McEvenue towered over the audience by about thirty feet. He performed magnificently, having memorized thousands of lines amid the pressure of his fulltime course of studies. My part was minimal, a messenger with a spear and in a Roman tunic, and I think that even then I muffed one of my entrances. The scenery and costumes were elaborate, one of the talented seminarians sewing all the costumes out of old cassocks, even red ones that had belonged to bishops. The audience was small but appreciative, consisting of the rector, the faculty, a few guests, and the small group of seminarians that hadn’t been dragooned into playing some part, however modest. One of the more interesting episodes during that time was the visit to the seminary by John Diefenbaker. It came during the

The “Ad Grad”

167

campaign for the federal election in the late fifties, and by visiting us he hoped, I presume, to swing the Spadina riding to the Conservatives. The visit was timed for lunch when the whole community would be assembled. The entire 150 of us, all in black cassocks, three-cornered birettas on our heads, were in place standing at our tables waiting for his entrance, and then in came “Dief ” accompanied by the rector and the vice-rector. There was, as usual, complete silence, and as they marched in, I will never forget the grim look of utter seriousness that only Diefenbaker could have. Here was the old Baptist coming into the lion’s den. I imagine that even he must have been somewhat daunted and perhaps distressed at the sombre spectacle before him. Grace was said by the vice-rector, in Latin of course, and Dief ’s head dropped well down his chest during its recitation. Then we all sat down and the usual passage from scripture was read, again in Latin. I wondered what was going on in Dief ’s head, what exactly he had got himself into in an effort to win a few votes. With the scripture finished, the rector called out “Deo gratias,” a sign of permission to speak, and the instant roar from 150 voices must have frightened the poor man out of his shirt. He seemed to relax somewhat as the rector kept up a steady stream of conversation, but he didn’t smile and still appeared in a state of shock. After forty minutes the ordeal was over, and the old warrior was led out with head bowed, never to return. The climax of the third year came with my ordination to the priesthood. It was an event that all of us had been building up to all these long years and was the consummation of all our hopes and dreams. I had been in the Order for twelve years and most of us were in our thirteenth year. It was a privilege that was granted only to the Jesuits that they could be ordained after their third year of theology and not wait until they had completed the full four years. The Church had been opposed to this privilege in the beginning but Ignatius had fought for it and won out. Like a marriage, ordination required much planning and preparation, who was to be invited, the reception, the first Mass, the ordination itself. Invitations had to be sent out, pictures taken, holy cards with your name and a message printed.

168

The Greater Glory

What was called a “rites” class was held in the preceding months to train us in the exacting and intricate movements of the Mass. Every movement, every gesture, every bow was prescribed and no deviation was permitted. The bows, for example, were of three kinds, simple, medium, and profound, each to be carried out at the appropriate moment of the Mass. Although I had attended Mass a thousand times, most of these movements I had never paid attention to, but until they were learned and performed with accuracy and grace, I wouldn’t pass the “rites” exam. I was glad to master them as they were important to all Catholics who attended their weekly and even daily Mass. By this time we had all been admitted to what were called the “minor orders,” such as doorkeeper and reader, which went back in time to the days of the early Church when, for example, the office of reader was extremely important as only a small percentage of early Christians, or anyone for that matter, could read. Also, the Greek script was not punctuated but lumped together and skill was required to make it intelligible. A few days before ordination we received first the subdiaconate and then the diaconate, the latter permitting deacons to preach and administer holy communion. The vestments were different from the priesthood’s, stiff and making us look as if we were wearing shoulder pads. The daily reading of the breviary was also required, in Latin of course. At the outset it took about an hour and a half because of having to run about asking what was to be read next. Eventually it got down to an hour, and I enjoyed it very much as it was mainly the psalms, translated beautifully from the Hebrew by a German Jesuit cardinal. You weren’t supposed to merely read the breviary but also to move your tongue or lips without sound, and what that consisted of was a matter of much discussion and controversy. I loved the smell of the leather binding and the crackle of the pages of the thin India paper as I read the various hours and the appropriate psalms that accompanied them. Ordination day finally came. It was a warm, sunny day in late June, and my family had made the trip by train and across the Great Lakes by boat. All but my mother were there, my father in his late seventies, my four brothers and sisters and their spouses.

The “Ad Grad”

169

The first act of us thirteen ordinands dressed in snow-white albs was to prostrate ourselves in the sanctuary before the ordaining bishop, Cardinal McGuigan, Archbishop of Toronto. He was a friend of my father, a fellow maritimer, and many years before he had been conducted to Toronto by my father in a special train graciously provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. He looked the part of a cardinal, an imposing presence in his ample scarlet robes. All he lacked was the appropriate voice for he was afflicted with a high whining tone that, though it reached up to the rafters, also pierced the ears of his audience. The ceremony was long and solemn, every movement directed by a young priest who later became a close friend of mine, Cyril O’Keefe. I was deeply moved by the significance of the event and I hoped that my headaches and anxiety would soon pass away with the performance of my priestly ministry. We were allowed to go home for a few days to celebrate a High Mass in our local parish. It was a pleasant occasion but I had been away for so long that I had lost touch with most of my friends, many of whom had moved away from Winnipeg in the interim. There was a certain amount of tension going through all the ceremonies but they went well enough, with the exception of my shaky voice in the singing of the High Mass. A few days later I was back East and helping out on Sundays in parishes in the lake district north of Toronto. My sermons were short and not memorable, and once when I forgot to consecrate a second chalice of hosts at a Sunday Mass, I ran out of hosts when giving out communion. It didn’t help when an irritated parishioner came up afterwards and reprimanded me for the oversight. The rector we had for the first two years of theology, who later became the provincial of the English Canadian Jesuits, was a very kind and perceptive man, Gordon George. He was also a very talented fellow who had worked on the editorial staff of the American Jesuit periodical, America, in New York for many years. He was appointed rector just before my coming into theology, and he very soon saw that many of his charges needed help, both spiritually and psychologically. He immediately set to work to try to remedy a situation that had deteriorated after years of harsh discipline and

170

The Greater Glory

inadequate spiritual direction for young men during their formative years. Many, even the most talented ones, had lost confidence in their own abilities, were unable to apply themselves fully to their studies, and were struggling to keep their heads above the murky waters of anxiety and depression. I don’t want to exaggerate the gravity of the problem, but it was serious enough to warrant immediate remedy. He spent hour after hour, night after night, attempting to set the men along a more positive and balanced path of living out the religious life. He wasn’t a professionally trained clinician but he had a great deal of experience in directing those who had devoted themselves to the religious life. He had a keen perception into the human psyche, a fine sense of humour, and above all a great warmth and rapport with most of those with whom he was dealing. I was one of the first persons he helped and I was immensely grateful for his putting me back on track and encouraging me to go on and do what I knew deep down I could achieve. Naturally, some he tried to help resisted his efforts, but the more serious opposition came from the higher superiors who doubted the efficacy and even the validity of his approach. They felt that the old formal system of toughening it out was quite adequate in the formation of the young Jesuits. However, Father George had perceived a change in the psychological attitudes and capacities of the scholastics since the end of the Second World War: he believed that they had to be treated differently and perhaps more gently and above all needed to be encouraged and not told that things had to be difficult, that it was their duty to grind on without complaint. In the end, Fr George won the approval of his critics and his superiors, but, more importantly, he set a host of scholastics along a more positive and cheerful path. Without his help I am sure that many would never have made it to ordination. The sick and depressed among the Jesuits had always been a prime concern of Ignatius from the very first. He had severely reprimanded any superior who did not solicitously attend to the sick for whom they were responsible, and he would have been shocked and distressed at the insouciance and neglect that existed four centuries later in the Jesuit seminaries of English Canada.

The “Ad Grad”

171

During our last year of theology we were sent only once a month to help out in parishes or hospitals since the main focus of the year was to complete our theological studies and to concentrate on preparations for the comprehensive examination at the end of the year. This was called the “ad gradum, the “ad grad” for short, in quest of the final stance or position of academic achievement in the Order and consisted of a review of the seven years of philosophical and theological studies and preparation for a two-hour oral exam that covered a hundred theses, twenty-five in philosophy and seventyfive in theology. After Christmas we had to choose by lot one of three groups, A, B, or C, each consisting of a different selection of a hundred theses. I was lucky enough to choose A, which had been the choice of one of my very clever friends the year before, and he kindly handed me over all the notes he had gathered in his earlier preparation. I had my own notes, of course, but he had a remarkable way of summarizing even the most complicated theses on a single, typewritten page. The month before the exam we were allowed to go to another Jesuit house not too distant to get ready for the ordeal. I chose the Martyrs’ Shrine near Midland, Ontario. It was a quiet spot before the crowds of pilgrims of the summer came, and to take a break from my preparations I helped out hearing confessions and saying Mass for the early pilgrims. At last doomsday arrived. I didn’t sleep very well the night before, but fortunately my time happened to be in the morning from ten to twelve when I was still fresh. As I entered the examination room I looked at the examiners sitting upright, all dressed in their black cassocks in a single row, like a flock of silent blackbirds ready to dive down and peck at me as soon as I attempted to defend any one of the hundred theses. A few gave me a wintry smile, while others had the gloomy look of executioners. The first thesis chosen was not an easy one and I stumbled around before I got onto the point I had to prove. The examiner spotted my difficulty at once and veered me back with a helpful question or two. There were two more theses in philosophy that I handled somewhat more adeptly, and then came the more important and longer section of questioning on my theological knowledge.

172

The Greater Glory

There was a short break after the first hour when we could have a coffee or according to long tradition, a glass of wine. I chose the latter, unwisely as it turned out as I was not used to wine at the time, especially in mid-morning, and for a few desperate moments when the ordeal resumed I felt unnerved and quite cloudy. However, my head soon cleared and I was able to focus not only on the lengthy proofs of the various theses but also to answer some knotty questions posed by the examiners. Several times a second examiner intervened and questioned me on points that presumably bothered him. After trying to answer these legitimate interventions and disposing of some of the adversaries of the particular theses – often rather unfairly in a single syllogism – I proceeded to the proofs that ranged from those according to reason, to the Fathers of the Church, to scripture, and finally to the dogmatic proof, that is, the teachings of the Church over the centuries. To keep this great wad of material in your head for a single twohour period, with your whole academic status in the Order depending on the outcome, and the entire discourse conducted in Latin, questions, answers, proofs etc., was quite a feat. However, I passed, not brilliantly I felt at the time, not four “tens,” that is, the marks of the four examiners each based on ten, but a respectable “eight plus,” as I learned only years later. All I knew that night from the rector, who called each of us down individually, was that I had successfully passed and was to be congratulated. That’s all that any of us was told, whether we had passed or failed. To have passed was enough for me, quite an achievement, I suppose, in retrospect, but more than anything it provided a relief from a burden that had been growing heavier for the past ten years.

10 The Third Degree

after spending the summer helping out in a parish in Winnipeg, I was sent for the final year of fifteen years of Jesuit training – although I had skipped one year – to a small house at Port Townsend in Washington. There, along with about thirty other young Jesuits from North America and Europe, I was to spend ten months to the day in a period called tertianship, the third year of novitiate, not studying but praying, visiting the sick, teaching catechism, giving short retreats and missions, and in general doing good works and preparing one’s soul and body for the full commitment of an active life of a Jesuit priest in whatever ministry would be assigned the following year. It was called the “schola affectus” (school of the affections), focusing not on academic studies but, as in the novitiate, on the life of the soul and on the way to making, or at least trying to make once more in a formal way, oneself a better and more spiritual person. It was a noble and demanding charge that required a perceptive and intelligent guide, and as luck or providence would have it, I was not to have that privilege. On the long trip by train to the west coast I had permission to stop for a day in Banff and Lake Louise, which I hadn’t visited for fourteen years. I didn’t have time, or the money for that matter, to play golf but I walked around the course that I had played so often as a youngster, took in the Bow Falls and the hotel where my sister and I used to roam about and befriend and bother the staff. I spent overnight at the little lung hospital run by nuns, said

174

The Greater Glory

a Mass, and took a bus to Lake Louise. I paddled around the lake on a calm, sunny day and treasured the countless times my family had been together there long ago. Then I had to put on my Roman collar again and head for the station, lugging my suitcase and my Olivetti portable, an ordination gift of the year before. The Tertian master in charge of guiding us had been appointed at the last moment to replace a Jesuit famous for spiritual advice and discernment over the years who had, I think, recently died. The new man had been an academic all his life at Seattle University and was thrust into this delicate position with little preparation. It was cruel for him, and unhappy for us. He had several daunting tasks, directing the thirty of us in spiritual matters, conducting our thirty-day retreat, and giving a daily lecture to us on the constitutions of the Order. It proved to be an impossible burden as a few days before the retreat he suffered a heart attack that put him out of action, and another Jesuit, a Frenchman, had to be called in to take over and direct the Long Retreat of thirty days. Death and sickness are unavoidable, of course, but those in charge of appointments, the major superiors, had a habit of appointing men whom they thought to be capable but who in fact were not up to the job. The idea was that God would provide where human nature failed. Perhaps He would and did provide in the over-all picture but in the immediate situation providence seemed to veer away, and it required a great deal of faith and above all self-help to make up the deficit. The locale of our tertianship was a remote spot in western Washington, two ferry rides from the city of Seattle. It was a lovely place, filled with rhododendrons whose blooms by then had long since faded and many other wild flowers, and ideal for long walks and excursions – except for the dogs – in three directions, the fourth being the ocean. The Jesuit in charge of running the house was the most charitable person I have ever encountered. There was nothing that he would not undertake to make our life easier: good food, concern for our health, even providing postage stamps and meeting us in the car when we returned by bus after our missions, even though the bus stop was a mere two-minute walk from the house. There were a few other priests in the house, half retired,

The Third Degree

175

but always willing to listen and help if they could. Of the thirty tertians most were Americans and they came from many of the Jesuit provinces in the United States – California, New England, New York, the South, as well as from Oregon and the North West. I found the men from these areas very different, more so, I think, than English Canadians were who came from the various parts of Canada. From that small sampling I gravitated more towards the southerners and north-westerners as being, it seemed, more like us. There were three of us English Canadians, and many from Europe and the Far East, all forming a disparate but interesting group. The Long Retreat, a second thirty-day marathon for everybody, started soon after we got settled. Since we had made retreats every year since the novitiate, the experience was not novel, but it was, nevertheless, completely different, deeper, richer but also more demanding of guidance through the shoals of the most profound spiritual foray I have ever experienced. Our director came from another time and culture, having undergone imprisonment in Russian jails and, holy as he was, he just did not understand the mentality of young North Americans of the early 1960s and their need for perceptive guidance in a world that had been changing radically since the end of World War 11. For the most part we were all left to our own devices, as it were, to perceive our own strengths and weaknesses and to build on them with little outside help. After all, we were in our early thirties and, although we had led a very sheltered life in the Order up until then, perhaps self analysis and motivation were more salutary for us in the long run. Once again we were exposed to the basic and gritty truths of the purpose of man in his short human existence, that “man was created to praise, do reverence to and to serve God our Lord, and thereby save his soul.” It was still a staggering formula, and even after so many years of prayer and meditation this principle and foundation required great faith and much grace to accept because it seemed to neglect man’s legitimate aims and desires. Yet again the answer lay in the sentences that followed, namely that in order to attain this end, “man should make use of things (material and spiritual) only insofar as they help him toward his end, and

176

The Greater Glory

withdraw from them insofar as they are a hindrance to him in regard to that end.” This means that man should not be too attached to anything, but be above, be independent of any and every attraction and motivation, whether it be wealth, honour, a short life or long life, even sickness or health. It does not mean that we should be indifferent to these things, although the Latin word, “indifferentia” is used: it does not mean uncaring, being apathetic and so forth, but it does mean desiring, using, and even loving solely and only those things in our lives that lead us to the end for which we were created. Thus man is important inasmuch as he could be the master of all things, but not be the slave to them. By preparing and disposing the soul to remove all inordinate attachments he could then discern what God wanted of him in laying out a plan for his life. This principle was profound but also challenging and practical because later in the retreat it led to a decision on what one should do with one’s life and the rules to use in coming to a wise and prudent choice. There were four and sometimes five hours a day of meditation. The fifth hour took place at night, at midnight, during the first week on sin and hell, and in the third week on the Passion of Christ. I didn’t mind getting up but after the jolting experience of viewing in my mind’s eye my sins or Christ’s sufferings I found it impossible to get back to sleep for many hours, and then the bell would ring again for another whack at meditation at five. In the hour interval between breakfast and the next session I jumped into bed and slept like a dead man. Before formulating the decision mentioned above, the highest peak of perfection was presented to us for our prayer and deliberation. It was no longer just a question of not being overly attached to wealth, honour, health, etc. to attain one’s end, but of going much further into a realm well beyond what humans would wish or much less attain on their own: that is, provided God’s glory be equal, actually to seek poverty with the poor Christ, and to seek reproaches and humiliations with Christ humiliated and laden with reproaches. This is what is known as the Third Degree of Humility and is expressed clearly not only in the meditation on

The Third Degree

177

the Three Degrees or Modes of Humility in the latter part of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius, but also in the eleventh and twelth rules of the constitutions that Ignatius later wrote. “They (the members of the Society) must diligently observe, esteeming it of great importance and of the highest moment … how much it helps and contributes to progress in spiritual life, to abhor wholly what the world loves and embraces and to accept and to desire with their whole strength whatsoever Our Lord loved and embraced … seriously to follow Christ … for His love and reverence … that in all things, as far as by the assistance of God’s grace we can, we may seek to imitate and follow Him, seeing He is the true way that leads men to life.” “To the end that this degree of perfection … be better obtained, let it be each one’s chief and most earnest endeavor in all things, as far as he can, to seek in the Lord his own greater abnegation and continual mortification.” This was the Mount Everest to which we were directed with God’s grace. Noble as it was, it demanded an ascent into the thin air of a spirituality that required not only extraordinary generosity but also extreme prudence and above all expert guidance in scaling the summit. All three I lacked. To try to do the hard and difficult thing always and everywhere, as far as I could, was a climb strewn with boulders: the danger, for example, of mortifying oneself excessively and ruining one’s physical health, the danger of riveting one’s every thought and action on doing what went so completely against nature, the danger of the anguish of scruples or seeing everything as dangerous or sinful, the risk of falling into sadness and depression because one didn’t and couldn’t live up to the high bar set for oneself. These were just some of the difficulties that such a path presented. It was true that Ignatius placed “caveats” in both rules, “as far as by the assistance of God’s grace we can” and “as far as he can,” but what precisely did this mean to a generous and sensitive but unguided soul? Expert and prudent guidance was an absolute requirement in this rarefied atmosphere, and that, I have to say, we young Jesuits sorely lacked. There was no guidance at this important time, and for us Canadians there had been very little far back in the days of our novitiate. Those who had been sent to

178

The Greater Glory

do their final year in Europe were much more fortunate, in France and in England especially, and some of us had had a few years of wise direction along the way. Even God’s grace, a generous spirit and a wise individual judgment were not enough in this eyrie of spirituality where the interpretation of “as far as he can” requires constant monitoring. Left to himself, Ignatius almost ruined his health, both in body and soul, by his excessive mortifications, and afterwards he insisted on wise direction for his companions as well as for himself. If he had been living in the 1950s he would have been very disturbed by its absence. To desire to suffer with Christ in what ordinarily besets and comes to us in the carrying out of our duties in our normal, daily lives might be noble and inspiring, but to wish constantly and inordinately to suffer in all things, even with Christ, suggests morbidity and even an unbalanced personality. In the latter part of our retreat, we were called into the priest who was supposed to be guiding us through Ignatius’ spiritual exercises and presented with a sheet of paper on which were inscribed the faults that had been noticed in us over the many years of the long training. It was called the “Speculum,” a mirror, that is of ourselves, a list or accumulation of faults that had been sent along to this director from the Jesuit Province from which each man had come. I didn’t cave in when I read mine as they seemed minor and rather trivial, but for many it was quite a shock and humiliation. To think that these faults had been piling up for years in the files of each man far away in Toronto and perhaps in Rome was daunting and somewhat frightening, and to see in print an enumeration of peccadilloes, only some of which had been noted before, rankled with many of the fellows and for some it took years to get over the revelation. One of the important aspects of this year was the study of the Jesuit constitutions. After the retreat was over we were given a daily lecture on the constitutions by the Tertian master. He was a bright fellow but wholly unprepared for his task, and it was clear that he had not recovered from the heart attack he had suffered in trying to prepare for his new role. Yet he manfully soldiered on although he couldn’t answer the searching questions of the fellows, many of whom already had advanced degrees in many fields of study. We

The Third Degree

179

did have a library in the house but it was small and inadequate. It would have been interesting and helpful to investigate the background of some of the many innovations that Ignatius had introduced into the Jesuit Order, for example, the extra vow of obedience to the pope, the dropping of chanting the daily office in choir, the two-year novitiate instead of one, the head man or general elected for life, the refusal to be made bishop unless ordered by the pope himself, the existence of a third year of novitiate, which we were going through at the time, and so forth. St Ignatius had fought for all of these changes for his Order against fierce opposition even of some of the popes as being contrary to the tradition and spirit of religious life, but he had doggedly persevered and had won out on every point. Thursday was our holiday and we would all pile into an ancient bus and head off for a small, dilapidated house on the ocean. The bus ride was a bit nerve-wracking because when the bus was purchased from the city of Seattle it had already logged a million miles. We would go off for long walks in the beautiful countryside and come back for a box lunch before hopping aboard our transit service for the return trip. This run-down house by the sea was rather euphemistically known as the villa; right from the beginning Ignatius had insisted on his men having a get-away spot separate from their normal residence in order to refresh themselves and recuperate for the coming week of labor. It was an excellent idea and much in keeping with the benign concern of the founder for the health and wellbeing of his men. We had a few chores around the house, keeping our rooms clean, a little work on the grounds, and especially taking turns serving tables at lunch and supper. We also cleaned and set the tables, and put the dishes through the machine, all of which I enjoyed as a break from routine. During these ten months I was sent off to carry out many ministerial works. One of the main assignments was known as the hospital “trial” – that is, helping out or taking over from the Catholic chaplain of one of the hospitals in the area. On two different occasions I helped out in a small hospital nearby run by nuns, but my third assignment was to take over for a month as the chaplain of a large Seattle hospital, also run by nuns. It was a challenging

180

The Greater Glory

and moving experience. My job consisted of visiting all the patients in the hospital, whatever their religious affiliation, asking the Catholics among them if they wanted to receive communion the next day and whether they wished to go to confession, especially if they were to go to surgery, and in general chatting with them and trying to buck up their spirits. If they had any moral worries I tried either to solve or assuage them if I could. Many I couldn’t, for instance when a middle-aged female patient asked me to arrange for the church blessing of her second marriage, and if I couldn’t, could I see if perhaps the new president, John Kennedy, could? It was rewarding but tiring work as I was on the floor most of the day and on call all night either for the emergency room or rarely, with cap and gown, for the operating room. To see a person die at peace with himself or herself affected me deeply. During that Lent I was sent back to Canada, to a Jesuit parish in what was then Port Arthur, part of the present Lakehead. The parish priest was a kind man, but a driver who was forever on the move going about his multiple apostolic works like a man possessed, and as a former master of novices he expected anyone working with him to do the same. I preached on Sundays at all the Masses, conducted separate parish missions for men and women, delivered many pep talks to the grade school children, and visited the sick in the parish in tow with the pastor. It was a bitterly cold late February and March and the wind came roaring off Lake Superior in incessant blasts as we made our way about the parish. I was glad to have the long black Melton cloth coat that my mother had had made for me before I entered the Order and I had been allowed to keep all these years, but when Lent finished with the climax of Holy Week and I returned to the flowers of Port Townsend, my fellow tertians had a good laugh at my anklelength coat as though I had just come from the North Pole, and in a sense I had. At the end of ten months to the very day our tertianship was over and we were all sent back to our own countries to await postings for the following year. I was assigned to one of the Jesuit parishes in Winnipeg for the summer where I could visit my family at almost any time during the week and even play a few

The Third Degree

181

games of golf and wait for the traditional day, the day of Ignatius’ death, 31 July, when the changes would be announced. The experience at Port Townsend had been rewarding. Whether it was spiritually rewarding I cannot say except that the Long Retreat had stirred me deeply, but the main benefit for me was an increase in self-assurance. After being cooped up in a seminary for fourteen years except for the teaching break in the middle, I felt much more confidence in myself after dealing with hundreds of real people with real problems in the hospitals and parishes to which I had been assigned, and I felt ready and eager to accept a posting at one of the Jesuit colleges in Canada. As I looked back at the fourteen years – fifteen for those who had had no ba when they entered – it had certainly been in terms of years a kind of odyssey, but in terms of direction and speed it was much more like a marathon, with the single purpose of racing the twenty-six miles from the sea to Athens to announce the victory over the Persians.The road was too narrow and harrowing and offered little relief or respite, but at least I had run the course. I was not presumptuous enough to think that there had been any kind of victory, yet I felt that my thoughts and emotions were directed more firmly and clearly towards the goal of helping others in whatever role was given to me by the Order. Later I realized that this was a delusion, that however hard I tried, my thoughts and emotions would not go in the direction I had set out upon. It was true that the road from Marathon to Athens was direct but it lay over rough and twisting terrain. The spiritual benefit of all those years is impossible to measure and difficult even to discuss. I said my prayers as earnestly as I could but the spirit, the mind, and the emotions are a curious blend that requires a unity that has always eluded me. Intellectually, the long course of studies was too narrow, too esoteric, too outmoded, based as it was on the philosophy and theology of scholasticism, albeit in a renewed form. Supreme thinkers though they were, there was too much of Aristotle and St Thomas, and too little of Plato, Kant, and Hume, who were set up as straw men to be bowled over by a single syllogism. Scripture studies were open and challenging, but dogmatics relied too much on the

182

The Greater Glory

Councils of the Church, important as they were but needing to be placed in their historical context, and too little on the solid theologians of every belief and stripe. Probably the best feature of the training lay in the thesis, where a single problem or idea had to be set down succinctly and expressed clearly in order to know precisely and really what was being discussed, then challenged by those who disagreed with it, and finally proved from all angles, using reason, the Fathers of the Church, scripture, and finally the teachings of the Church over the centuries.

11 Scotland Yard

in the summer I learned that I was to be sent to Montreal to teach at Loyola High School, the largest and oldest of the English Jesuit high schools in Canada. I was to be the class master of one of the fourth high classes, the science and mathematics group of boys, Four B. They were a very bright bunch of young men, having chosen this demanding stream of studies. It did not call for Greek like the Four A class, but besides the very heavy maths program they were still required to take Latin, which was my assignment. I also taught them English and religion, and Latin to two of the other fourth highs. The classroom was sequestered up in the garret of the building in what had been a dormitory for junior boarders over the years, and because we were removed from the mainstream of the school, it was a while before I got the knack of keeping the class on an even and harmonious level of discipline. The boys, ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen, were full of life, but they were also serious students and had to cover at least the equivalent of first-year college mathematics. Later I had my class cover even the college Latin program that was a requirement at Loyola at the time. As this was their fourth year of Latin we went through a good deal of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, as well as a complete review of the grammar. Three Latin exams were required for all classes, but as I held the honorific position of head of the Latin department I soon reduced the requirement to two, Latin grammar and composition, and Latin authors, prose and poetry. In subsequent years I often asked my former students

184

The Greater Glory

whether they resented having to submit themselves to all that memorizing of the forms and rules of Latin grammar. Although many found it a trifle tedious at the time, practically all considered it useful and profitable in retrospect. Some had every daily preparation of twenty-or-so lines down letter-perfect, but I remember one student, Dick Balfour, probably the best student I ever had, slipping on the uncommon word for fallow deer in Horace, damma. As a joke I used to ask him years later what word Horace used, and of course he remembered. He later became a law professor in Toronto, and I wonder whether he still remembers it. No doubt he does: most good students remember their mistakes. In the early sixties the academic program at Loyola High School was fairly strong. Despite my interest in the classics I must admit that there was a little too much stress on Latin and Greek but over the years inevitably the emphasis was reduced and now it is one of the very few schools in Quebec that has retained at least a modicum of Latin in its curriculum. The loss of Latin is a phenomenon that exists in all the western world, in North America as well as Europe. Classical studies will always be taught as they are part of our cultural heritage but they will never assume the importance in our high schools they once had. The mathematics program had been built up systematically by two excellent teachers, Doug Potvin and Jim Pearson, but the sciences were a little slower in assuming their importance. The English courses covered many of the great poets and prose writers, although there were bad doses of things like cbc radio plays. The fourth high course included Macbeth, which the boys seemed to like. On one occasion, in a colourful enactment of the dagger scene with a bloody dagger strung on a wire and the boys in costume, Lady Macbeth was suitably dressed but with a most protuberant bodice. In my comments afterwards I was reported to have said that the production was excellent but that Lady Macbeth was a trifle overplayed. Every Friday the boys were given a writing assignment to be done over the weekend, a short story, a poem, an essay. They didn’t look forward to it, I am sure, but it was excellent training in style, grammar, and self-expression. The English teachers, myself included, spent a huge amount of time

Scotland Yard

185

correcting this material, but over the years every student profited enormously in his slow advance to literacy. I got to know the boys well, not only in my own 4B. As I taught in three of the four senior classes I knew all the boys by name after the first or second day, and since I supervised in the halls and locker room a few times a week I gradually got to know the younger boys as well as those of the Greek class, 4A: Alan Maclean, later a prominent doctor; Roger Abbott and Don Ferguson of The Royal Canadian Air Farce fame; Michael Turner; Mark Starowicz, the cbc producer; and a host of others. I tried to connect some distinctive characteristic or feature with their names: for example, Michael Turner, now a prominent notary in Montreal, always wore a green cap in winter and leaned back against his locker as he smiled and talked with his friends. Alan Maclean was always laughing and Roger Abbott was forever planning some activity with his cohorts. In time I knew everyone in the school, even the first highs, and it helped when I introduced a new book of Latin grammar and taught in one of the those classes for a couple of years. As in most Jesuit schools there was a great emphasis on sports. All the extra-mural teams were well coached and were always in contention in the city leagues. A great feeder for these teams was the intra-mural teams, a few of which I coached. For those with less interest in sports there was a variety of clubs, debating, photography, etc., even a bridge group that I tried to get going. In the fall the senior football team practised every night during the week when there wasn’t a game scheduled. The big and always formidable opponent was Lower Canada College, and I got to know their headmaster, Dr Penton, a fine, towering man who was always on the sidelines, striding up and down, urging on his team. Our principal, Fr Ken Casey, from an old Montreal family, also was always there for his teams. Fr Casey had a tough job running a school of 350 boys, but he never wavered in his duty of praising, encouraging, and chastising. The latter factor came into play once after a senior football practice one Friday afternoon. Instead of going home for dinner a half dozen or more of the boys decided to let off a little steam after a

186

The Greater Glory

hard week, and they bought cases of beer and rented a motel room not far from the school. They were all under-age, of course, and presumably not used to drinking. They made a row at the motel and the principal was immediately informed. There was hell to pay. If a student followed the rules, studied hard, and produced according to his ability, everything went well, but in Jesuit schools if he decided to go against the rules, then punishment was swift and severe, and in my experience occasionally harsh. Several of the unfortunates held the highest positions in the school, president of the student body, president of the sodality (the most prestigious religious organization in the school), captain of the football team, etc. All were unceremoniously ejected from their posts as well as from the senior football team and not allowed to participate in any student activity for the rest of their senior year. Many of these were in my home class, and I could see that they felt the blow and humiliation heavily and some resented their treatment to this very day. After three years of teaching, my Jesuit friend Cyril O’Keefe encouraged me to pursue a master’s degree in classics at McGill. The Loyola principal was in favour as well, so I started by taking one advanced course in Latin while still teaching in the high school. Once again I found myself preparing my twice-weekly classes on the bus. I did well in the spring examination, and the following fall I enrolled for the full master’s program. This required a thesis, which I wrote during the following summer, and then I was back again in the high school classroom. My thesis was concerned with a little known early fourth-century Christian apologist by the name of Lactantius about whom I knew nothing except that he was a fine Latin stylist, often referred to as the Christian Cicero, and I chose him then mainly because very little had been written on him over the last few centuries. I enjoyed my year of classical studies at McGill immensely. My thesis was highly praised by an outside reader, but I still wanted to return to high school teaching, at least for a few more years, in part to pay back for the respite I had taken from the classroom. In 1968, after being a Jesuit for twenty-one years, I was asked to pronounce my final vows in the Order. I was to take the four

Scotland Yard

187

vows, the last being a special vow to the pope, to be sent anywhere, anytime, to any posting in the world. It was a solemn occasion to which I invited a few friends and relatives in the Montreal area, but it was mainly private and most of all personal. It meant no change in my daily routine: I still taught every day and often went out on Sundays to help in the various English Catholic parishes in the city. One of the parishioners generously drove me back and forth, and I came to know many of the diocesan priests and to see how earnestly they worked in their own parishes. Theirs was a life so different from mine, but even then I believed that mine was as important as theirs. Every first Friday of the month the whole school assembled in the large college chapel for a Mass and sermon, usually delivered by the school chaplain; it always had a strong and practical slant that seemed to shake up the boys for a few days or so. To my mind religion was never overdone at Loyola, or for that matter at any Jesuit school that I know of. There was a course in religion each year, but it consisted only of two periods a week. There was a daily Mass for those who cared to go, but compulsory attendance at Mass was only once a month. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin existed for those who wished to join, without pressure or obligation. I taught the religion course in my own class, and I always found the questioning and interchange interesting and stimulating. I remember one class when we were discussing the “sixth and ninth,” specifically the question of the advisability of sex education in the schools. I was interested to hear what the boys thought about it. After various opinions were batted about, one fellow raised his hand and said that he was entirely against any kind of sex education for the simple reason that it detracted from the romance and excitement that were created when you learned all about sex in the back lane with your friends, with no embarrassed parent or authority figure bumbling along about it. During the course of my second year of teaching, one of the older priests, Fr John Hodgins, came to me and asked whether I would like to assist him in taking some boys to Europe the following summer. Fr Hodgins was by this time a legend at Loyola, always teaching one of the first-year classes, 1B. He was an excellent

188

The Greater Glory

teacher, but more, he was an extraordinary man, warm, gifted, and humane. He loved his teaching, he loved his classroom that he had decorated himself, and above all he loved his students in a noble and genuine fashion that is seldom found anywhere. He was also kind to the young Jesuits who might otherwise have found it hard to adjust to the regime of living in a large Jesuit community. But his kindness went out beyond the school. One of the men who served tables for the Jesuits was a young Austrian who had come out to Canada without a penny in his pocket. After a year or so of performing this menial task, he was asked one day by Father Hodgins whether he intended to spend the rest of his days waiting on table. Of course he said no, but what else could he do? Fr Hodgins suggested various possibilities and finally they hit upon a career of metal welding. But the young man knew little English, no French, and could barely read even in his own language. That was no problem for Hodgins. He went out and bought a welding manual and read it aloud line by line, translating the difficult parts into German, which he had learned. The upshot was that the young fellow mastered the manual, passed the provincial tests, landed an excellent job (also with Fr Hodgins’ help), and eventually married a lovely woman and had three children. Father Hodgins had already taken groups to Europe, and now again he was planning another foray. It was fairly easy to garner the required number of students, first because it was a wonderful experience at that age and secondly because of the reasonable price for the five-week adventure, just over a thousand dollars. It was still in the early sixties and prices were ridiculously low, a full five weeks that included sea voyage, hotels, land transportation, museums. It was a tremendous bargain. The Jesuits provided us with no supplement, so we had to have fifteen boys each, at least thirty in all, to cover the cost for Father Hodgins and myself. A few friends gave us a bit of money and some parents slipped us ten dollars (for which we had to ask permission) but beyond that we two had no money, and yet it was an exciting prospect to take a sea voyage of five days each way and to spend three weeks in Western Europe.

Scotland Yard

189

Although it was mid-June, the sea crossing over the North Atlantic was cold and stormy. The boys loved the ship, the last of the Canadian Pacific Empresses, I think, but one of my first duties as chaperon was to go to the head barman in the lounge and ask him not to serve liquor to the boys, who ranged in age from fourteen to seventeen. I was surprised that he was reluctant to do so, and only after much persuasion and strong words did he finally agree to do what he could. In the event it wasn’t much. We landed in Liverpool and had a bus waiting to take us across to Bath and Oxford and then to London, a truncated trip because of a bus strike. We arrived in Oxford late one Sunday morning and went to a Catholic church after all the Masses were over and the pastor and his assistants were having their Sunday dinner, tired after their long morning ministry. Without the bus strike we would not have called, but it was Sunday and I wanted to say Mass for the boys. I rang the bell at the rectory. An angry and flushed pastor opened the door and made me stand there as I explained my dilemma. All he said was, “It was fetid of you not to have informed me before” and slammed the door. With thirty boys waiting in the bus, I was about to go into the church myself and set up an altar when the door opened again and a lay brother smiled and asked me to come along and he would make the arrangements. By a strange coincidence that same pastor was the recipient of our hospitality at Loyola in Montreal later that summer. We saw a few of the Oxford colleges on the run and then off to London for two days, dashing from Madame Tussaud’s to the Tower to the Houses of Parliament like mad hares. We were to leave Liverpool Street Station at two o’clock for the boat train to Harwich. One of the more mature boys, although he was only fourteen, asked permission to go to the British Museum to present a rock sample to one of the curators. He had been there the previous summer with his family and had got into discussion with this man, who had asked him to bring a sample of a certain mineral from his collection if he ever returned to England. Father Hodgins and I agreed but with the proviso that he return to the

190

The Greater Glory

hotel by twelve because we were leaving for the station at one. Twelve, twelve-thirty, one came and no Czerny. We left instructions with the hotel to send him on to Liverpool St Station. There the thirty of us disembarked from the bus and were directed to the boat train, but just as we got aboard a station master entered the coach and announced, “Sorry, boys, we’ve put you on the wrong train.” We gathered our baggage, climbed up over a bridge, raced to another train just in time to get everyone on – or so we thought – and the train darted out of the station. I got one of the senior boys to call the roll. All accounted for, except for Czerny. Where was he, still at the British Museum, at the hotel, in the Underground, or lost in the bowels of London? By the time we realized that he was missing, the train was miles out of London heading northeast to Harwich. We couldn’t turn back, we couldn’t phone, but we did assume that the boy had with him his itinerary which had every destination and hotel clearly marked for each day and which we insisted each boy carry with him in case of getting separated from the group. Even a copy was given to the parents for mail and packages before the trip. Czerny would know exactly where we would be, the next night, for example, in Cologne after the drive in our bus from The Hook of Holland. Czerny was not at the hotel in Cologne, nor was there any word from him. Alarmed, Father Hodgins and I decided to call Scotland Yard in London. Unflappable, they told us not to worry but to call the next night. Fortunately I remembered the name of the assistant-curator whom Czerny had contacted at the British Museum. Up the Rhine the following night Hodgins and I pooled our scanty resources for another expensive phone call to London. Scotland Yard had nothing to report except that they had tracked down the British Museum man in Surrey and he had told them that, yes, Czerny had seen him but that he had left to get back to the hotel in time. We were to call again each night until he was found. One of the more sinister aspects of this frightening episode was that Czerny’s parents were Czechs who had come out from behind the Iron Curtain, and also that the Cold War was still on. We feared that this bright boy who spoke four languages might be

Scotland Yard

191

spirited away back to his parents’ homeland. The boys were worried too, of course, and it cast a pall over the whole trip, but we couldn’t turn back because Czerny could turn up any night at one of our hotel stops. To add to the confusion, one of the boys had an uncle in Interpol in France whom he kept on wanting to call, but Scotland Yard had already told us that Interpol had been alerted. For five nights we called London and still no word of Czerny. On the evening of the sixth day just as the bus pulled into a small Austrian town by the name of Bischopshofen, standing, rather nonchalantly I thought, on the curb in front of one of the two hotels was Czerny himself. The boys let out a roar of relief and pleasure. The prodigal had returned. Czerny had his passport, but he had misplaced his itinerary. Yet he remembered that we were to be in Cologne the first night in Europe, and he had flown over there the very day we arrived, but he did not know the name of the hotel. However, knowing German he used a phonebook and phoned the hotels in alphabetical order to find out where we were staying. He phoned seventeen hotels before giving up at the letter “L.” We happened to be at the Maria Laach, one letter past his enquiries. Remembering the name of the small Austrian town where we were to stay he had jumped on a train and headed directly to Austria without informing anyone, not least the police, and had spent four quiet days waiting to rejoin the cavalcade. How could you reprimand this young man after all that? There were many more adventures, most not quite so serious. One of the requirements for a large group, notably teen-age boys who are notoriously dilatory, was to have a specific time for leaving a place. The greater the leeway you allow, the more they will take advantage of it, so only a few minutes extra time were all we allowed. After lunch one day in a town north of Venice the time of departure came, the check list was made, and one of the older boys was missing. We sent out scouts to no avail and waited a few more minutes. We were only sixty miles from Venice, and there were many trains going on to Venice that afternoon, any one of which he could catch. To sharpen up any prospective stragglers Fr Hodgins ordered the bus to start. We pulled away in the sure

192

The Greater Glory

knowledge that the boy would get to Venice on his own and be with us that night. After dinner at our second-class hotel we checked with the concierge constantly until midnight, and still no late arrival. Even in the morning there was no sign of him. When we informed our guide, he became very excited and ordered all thirtythree of us to follow him to the questura, the police station. It was a strange sight to behold, thirty-one boys, two priests with the frantic guide well ahead, racing up and down over bridges, in the direction of the station. We were ushered into a large Renaissance room with an enormous solitary desk behind which sat the glowering figure of an official who, of course, turned out to be the chief of police, and in the corner sitting quietly and sheepishly was our boy. After a few preliminary remarks the harangue started, but it wasn’t directed at Father Hodgins and myself, as it should have been, but at the guide. As the full force fell upon the poor guide, he had the temerity to respond in kind, and then ensued an altercation that lasted at least ten minutes. It turned out that the previous afternoon the boy had come around the corner just as we were leaving, had sensibly gone to the police station there in the little town, and the police had propped him on the back of a motorcycle and chased us down the highway. When they lost us in the traffic, they had driven him all the way into Venice and brought him to the police station. He too did not have his itinerary with him and of course did not know the name of our hotel. In those years Italy was still recovering from the effects of the war. Many buildings were still standing in ruins and others pockmarked by rifle and machinegun bullets. The economy was depressed and hotel owners were still struggling. At every hotel there was an incident in which the concierge accused the boys of tearing a sheet or towel or breaking a fixture or even a glass. Over the years Fr Hodgins had learned to ignore these complaints as groundless, and many times we drove off with the manager chasing the bus and yelling at us, waving a torn sheet or towel. It is true that the boys played about in their rooms, and we tried to watch for any damage done, but for most of the day the boys were

Scotland Yard

193

cooped up all day in the bus and were ready for a little movement after dinner. You couldn’t lock them up at nine p.m. Usually the younger boys stayed close to Fr Hodgins and myself and we would all go up and down the streets of the little towns together, but the older boys went off by themselves, some to drink, though we tried to watch for any excess. In any case, the older ones always ventured out at least in pairs. One time, though, two of the younger boys came back from a walk around Lucerne and reported that they had been approached by two perverts. It frightened them and after that they didn’t stray far from the group. Then, in Rome our agents had arranged for us to stay in a central hotel, and when the bus stopped, I went in to announce our arrival. As the boys sweltered in the bus I quickly discovered that this hotel was, in fact, a brothel with half-naked women standing by their doorways. I quickly retreated and with help from the father of one of the boys who happened to be in Rome at the time, we moved elsewhere. The boys were warned to be on the alert for pickpockets and not to spend their small money allowances on tinsel and glass. Many of them bought little tea sets for their mothers. They might have had second thoughts when they had to cart them around all through Europe and across the sea. As a precaution many of the younger ones asked Fr Hodgins to carry their money as well as their passports. In Venice this precaution almost backfired. Fr Hodgins carried these valuables in an old black briefcase that he always had with him. As we stepped off the bus at the quai in Venice waiting for our water taxis, a tiny, filthy urchin sneaked in behind us onto the bus and went straight for the briefcase. He got out of the bus and started to run for the alley before we noticed him. Hodgins let out a shout and in two bounds he caught up with the urchin, snatched the case from him and gave him a clout on the ear before he vanished around the corner. It was a narrow escape, about twenty passports, very valuable on the black market at that time, and thousands of American dollars in cash. In London at one of the big train stations, Hodgins let his suitcase down in the concourse for no more than a second and it

194

The Greater Glory

was gone. He looked round and saw a very well-dressed couple walking quickly away with the suitcase. He bolted after them and blocked their way. “This is my suitcase,” he demanded. They casually looked down and the man said, “O my word, Sally, we’ve picked up the wrong case” and disappeared into the crowd. Despite close calls, I don’t think Fr Hodgins ever lost anything on his many trips, except, of course, the boy Czerny. I lost fifteen pounds on my two trips but enjoyed them, especially the first one with John Hodgins. He was a wonderful companion, a warm and witty priest whom we all miss. The boys, of course, enjoyed their trip, and despite complaints like, “O not another museum,” their cultural horizons were immeasurably enlarged and enriched. Back in Montreal, during the school year the high school faculty was challenged occasionally by the senior students to play a studentfaculty game. We usually accepted, even though most of us were not in the same physical shape as the boys, but we had a couple of very good athletes who had played college sports. Also something I looked forward to were the faculty parties. Every month or so the faculty and their wives put on a little party, usually on Friday nights at one or other of the teachers’ houses. There were beer and wine and eats, but especially it was a chance to get to know the other teachers away from the school. It was really the first time in fifteen years that I associated with women socially. Most of my fellow teachers had married very fine women and I came to know and like many of them, who were most supportive of their husbands in their careers. Teaching the same limited material to youngsters day after day, month in, month out, even in a harmonious and disciplined atmosphere, can be very wearing, and the wives encouraged their husbands every step of the way. Those men who stuck it out either were born teachers or eventually came to like it and the reward of a student comprehending and responding usually made the toil worthwhile.

12 Sleeping with the Mummy

i liked the high school, the teaching, the faculty, the activities, and especially the students. I made many friends among them, friendships that have lasted even after all these years. Gradually, however, I began to want to go on for my doctorate in classics. I received much encouragement from my friend Fr Cyril O’Keefe, who taught European history in the university section of Loyola, and finally from the provincial who happened to be a classicist and had taught me years before. He was the man who counted, the one who would or would not grant me the necessary permission. The rector at Loyola was opposed, and the principal was chagrined when I gave him the news. Both he and the rector wanted me to stay in the high school and presumably wait to replace Ken Casey when the time came. They asked me to reconsider, but my mind was made up and the permission had come from the top. I had done well at McGill in my Master’s degree, but at that time McGill had no doctoral program. I enquired whether they might initiate one, and they replied that they would consider it. In the meantime I applied to Princeton and I was accepted. After a few months McGill said that they would be willing to start the doctoral program in the fall, and as I preferred to stay in Montreal I signed up at McGill as their first doctoral candidate in classics. The program consisted of four courses, a “comprehensive,” examination and a thesis. The courses were taken with other graduate students, most on the Master’s level. I profited a great deal from two long papers in the Roman history course, the one on Constantine

196

The Greater Glory

forming a background for my thesis. I also enjoyed the Homer course from Professor Paolo Vivante in which we covered most of the two epics. The comprehensive list included large sections of the Latin and Greek corpus, but also for me, many of the Church apologists and fathers, some in their entirety, an enormous task that required months of reading and preparation. For the topic of my thesis I had chosen to dig more deeply into the works of Lactantius, which had been the subject of my Master’s thesis, though this time from the point of view of him as a teacher of Christian doctrine. The thesis took two years to write, and to supplement the small holdings at McGill in that area I had to obtain books by inter-library loan and also to travel to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton, where in the late sixties the stacks were open all night. I thought that my work was going well as each chapter had been approved along the way. Finally the thesis was finished and accepted by my director but, without being read and checked by anyone else in the department, it was sent off to an outside reader. I was dismayed to learn that the thesis did not meet the approval of the outside reader. It put the department at McGill into a difficult position as I was their first doctoral candidate. I revised the thesis in a few months, following the recommendations of the outside reader, and I defended it, not very persuasively or articulately, I’m afraid, as I was distraught at not being able to answer some rather simple and trivial questions about Cassiodorus and his Vivarium, “Fish-pond,” or whether the Apostle Peter visited Asia Minor, which I should have known, but at last it was over with a few scars and bruises in the process. It was now 1972, as yet I had no university posting and I was forty-six years old. Eventually I was hired as a part-time professor by Loyola to teach two language courses in classics, one in elementary Greek, the other in intermediate Greek, but I was also asked to offer a course in the department of theology, a course of my own design with the fancy name of “The Shape of Early Christian Thought.” In a teaching sense it was a full load, especially for my first year of university life, and I enjoyed every minute of it, not only the two Greek language courses, which included Plato and some of the Greek lyrics, but also delving into the

Sleeping with the Mummy

197

thought processes that prevailed in the intellectual circles of the early Christians. I had about fifteen excellent students in that group and I remember ending up celebrating a very early Christian Liturgy that lasted only about ten minutes. I had a particular liking for teaching Greek grammar and was able to teach the elementary course every second year for the next sixteen years. The following year I was brought on full-time as an assistant professor with a tenure track. As I prepared intensely for every class, the reward generally came in the form of the students’ questions, interest, and apparent comprehension. Before each class I would write a short summary of my lecture on the board, and even in the Greek and Latin grammar classes I would put down in point form what I wanted to cover in that class. Many times over the years the dean’s office threatened to close down classics unless we came up with a sufficient number of students. As a result, we all had to dig down and produce courses well beyond the Greek and Latin languages in order to survive. One man gave interesting courses on Meso-American culture that drew large numbers. We were all obliged to offer courses in the vernacular that covered the whole gamut of classical culture, not only Greek and Roman history and archaeology but also classical mythology, Greek and Roman literature in translation, and I managed to conjure up courses with titles like “Love, Hate and Friendship in the Ancient World” or “Greeks and Romans and the Afterlife” that attracted thirty to forty students. The courses offered solid material but the catchy titles were somewhat of a come-on and I noticed that the courses with such titles were quietly dropped after I retired. We did attract scores of students, however, and many of them went on to take a course or two in the languages, some even enrolling as majors or honours. I gave twenty-one different courses in my years of teaching. In the advanced Greek course we covered at least six books of Homer, and several times we went through the Greek lyrical poets, which included the fragments of Sappho. One year I taught a course in Greek prose composition in which among other challenges we tried to turn a Montreal Gazette editorial into classical Greek. That caused a few headaches. Perhaps the most interesting course,

198

The Greater Glory

for me at any rate, was entitled “The Intellectual History of the Late Roman Empire” in which each of the honours students assumed a different role, one a Roman Stoic, another a Neo-platonist, a third an Epicurean, and so forth, each giving a paper on a topic in his or her assigned philosophy. The others would attack it, according to their assigned role. It was a trifle ambitious even for honours students, but I think that they grasped at least some of the rudiments of each philosophical position as it was presented. A slight problem was created for me if a student did not show up for the presentation and I had to be ready to give a full lecture on that topic myself, and even if the student did show up, I had to be prepared to pose questions if the others were unforthcoming. Classics was a tiny department, and with a small number of five or six faculty it would have been helpful if we had always worked harmoniously together. At times we did work well together, at others we did not, and when we didn’t, matters became very unpleasant. Differences of opinion in policy and detail are inevitable and tolerable, but often these differences spilled over into the realm of the personal. The Classics students were very enthusiastic about their studies and even had organized into a group called the Students’ Classics Association. They sponsored a wide variety of events including parties and a Classical Week in second term that had its climax with a parade of Roman senators and soldiers and, of course, the emperor. To the tune of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” we marched in procession with the emperor ridiculously arrayed in a Roman toga and delivering an oration in Latin to the assembled crowds. I was asked to arrange to borrow an Egyptian mummy from McGill for one display, and we were granted the request only after we had promised faithfully to stand guard night and day over the priceless object. My first thought was to cart it over to the Jesuit residence for the night but I feared the pagan object would disturb some of the aged fathers. In the event, along with some others I stood watch until around ten and then a few students took over and, spreading their sleeping bags in cozy proximity, spent the night sleeping with the mummy. This episode served to advertise the department and even attracted a few more students.

Sleeping with the Mummy

199

Mainly through student initiative and help, classics put out an attractive brochure outlining the various courses and requirements for the major and honours programs with a list of the faculty and their academic degrees and research interests. It was highlighted by classical motifs and even included the course timetable. Soon other departments picked up the idea and put out their own versions, but it was classics that led the way. When I began teaching at the university level I did not wear my black clerical clothes but changed into a lay suit or sports jacket. It was quite a shift, especially tying a tie, but I soon got used to it, and the students alternated between calling me professor or Father Casey, and sometimes Dr Casey. I did some ministry, helping out in the various parishes in the city, but after taking Saturday off I had to use much of Sunday to prepare for the classes of the week. I usually had the prescribed three full courses to get ready, and often I took on one or more other courses for a few students who needed some addition for their degree. I said Mass in the Loyola chapel once during the week at noon for students and staff, but this did not require much preparation as the homily lasted only a few minutes. I enjoyed doing this more direct ministry. Occasionally I would be called on to assist a person or a couple with a marriage problem, and once I was called by a former student who had taken to drugs to get him back home from a certain bar from which he was unable or unwilling to move. I took the address and drove there in my clerics. It turned out to be a topless bar, and as I entered, Roman collar and all, the ladies smiled and neatly turned away while I gathered up my intoxicated charge. Every second year in May after the exams were corrected and the marks turned in, I had the good fortune to visit the classical sites in the Mediterranean Basin. But how was I to finance these trips with my vow of poverty? On every occasion I drew up a project that consisted of three weeks of research at the British Library in London or at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and submitted it either to the Canada Council or the university for approval, well in advance. If the project was accepted, the air fare and the time spent in London or Paris would be covered. To finance the first segment of those trips to the classical sites of

200

The Greater Glory

about one week’s duration I applied to the Jesuit Order. As I have mentioned before, the vow of poverty of the Jesuits is not one of indigence but of dependence. It has always been the policy of the Jesuits to support any of their members in the field to which they had been assigned, whether it meant going to Cannes for the annual film festival or a zoology convention in the Galapagos Islands. All I was required to do was to explain my project to the rector and request his permission, which he would then grant or not grant as he saw fit. The presumption was to keep one’s expenses modest (my request from the Order at that time amounted to no more than three or four hundred dollars) and to stay at a Jesuit residence wherever possible. In my case, these ventures took place before the oil crisis in the mid-seventies, and prices in the Mediterranean were extraordinarily economical. Hotel rooms even in Athens cost less than ten dollars a night, and considerably less in the countryside. A week’s rental of a small car cost about one hundred dollars. I always kept within my minuscule budget, and since I was carrying out the career that the Jesuit Order had approved and encouraged, I felt no qualms of conscience in enhancing my knowledge in the field of classics. My first trip was to North Africa in the modern states of Algeria and Tunisia, the location of the ancient Roman Provinces of Africa and Numidia where Lactantius, the fourth century rhetorician, lived and worked. I flew from Paris to Algiers and then in a tiny plane south-east to Constantine, the old Cirta where Lactantius was born. We circled low over the small city in the brief dusk just before the sun dropped into the west, and I could see from the window scores of veiled women in their chadors casting long shadows and running away from the plane and its shadow as if it were a visitation from another planet. Constantine stands on a high plateau, protected on three sides by cliffs and the swift Rhumel River, and has been an important market town for over 2,000 years. Because of continued habitation through the centuries there are few remains of the Roman occupation of that city in the first five centuries ad, but in the rugged countryside both in modern Algeria and Tunisia there is a multiplicity of old Roman cities whose ruins have been excavated and

Sleeping with the Mummy

201

stand clean and clear in the sharp sunlight. Looking on from a distance I could easily imagine the bustle and din of a Roman camp city. Many of them were fort cities on the edge of the desert, each clearly showing its military nature with streets at right angles, its forum, its triumphal arches, its amphitheatre. I visited as many of these cities as I could in my tiny rented car, taking pictures to be made later into slides with the hope that they might enrich my lectures in the coming years. As the roads were in bad repair or often had deteriorated into mere trails and as twilight was almost non-existent, I soon learned to be back at my home base in Tunis or Constantine well before the black night descended. I just made it in time more than once. One of the sites I was anxious to visit was an ancient hill town north-west of Constantine, the Roman fort of Cuicul, now called Djemila, founded by the Emperor Trajan in the first century ad. Like Cirta it was built on a three-sided plateau, 900 meters above sea level, and it had been excavated only recently in the early twentieth century. This time I had no car and I asked the concierge in the small hotel where I was staying how best to get to Cuicul. “Vous avez de la chance,” he cheerfully replied. It so happened that a group of Russian tourists with their own bus were planning to visit there the next day, and he would ask their guide whether I could accompany them to the site. The guide, an attractive young Russian woman in her mid-twenties who spoke both English and French, readily agreed, with the small proviso that I should board the bus before her group and sit at the back. At 8:30 sharp next morning the bus took off. There was a short talk by the guide in Russian to the group, presumably on what they were to see that day, and then came a couple of rousing Russian songs in which all joined. Up to that point nobody paid any attention to me, sitting quietly in the back, but once the songs were over several jumped up and came back to talk with me. It turned out that they were all from Siberia, mostly from Igrutsk. Amazingly, they spoke English and more surprising still, they all carried tiny English dictionaries with them in case they were at a loss for an English word, even in Arabic and French Algeria. They were mainly professional engineers and scientists who had won the

202

The Greater Glory

trip abroad as a reward for their efforts for the Motherland, and in those Iron-curtain days were permitted to travel only to those countries friendly to the Soviet Union, as was Algeria. They were very intelligent and most friendly especially when they discovered that I was a Canadian, asking me how was it possible for Elizabeth to be Queen of Canada as well as Queen of England. They were eager to talk about anything except politics, and they became very animated about hockey, asserting strongly that their Firsov was much the better player than my Bobby Hull. By the time we reached Cuicul we had exchanged little gifts including rubles and Canadian dollars. With handshakes and best wishes we parted at the site, they to be lectured to, and no doubt monitored, by the young guide, I to examine on my own the spectacular ruins, especially the enormous theatre plunging down precipitously on a hillside with its 2,500 seats for a population only twice as large. My first trip to a pagan shrine was to Cumae, near Naples, where the Sibyl was wont to prophesy for her master, the God Apollo. I got off the train nearby and began to walk down a straight but lonely road with woods on both sides. I felt a slight breeze on my face, coming no doubt from Lake Avernus in the distance, the entrance to the Underworld. Suddenly I came upon a grey-headed man and a young girl locked in each other’s arms. A little farther on, a pair of old women clad in black appeared from the side of the road, crossed and disappeared. I began to experience a vague sense of foreboding. Then, just as suddenly a large black dog appeared not far before me, Cerebrus, who guarded the entrance to Hades, I immediately thought. It glared at me and vanished into the ditch. By this time I had reached Lake Avernus and as I walked along looking for the path to the Cave where the Sibyl used to prophesy, the wild corn along its shore rustled. A snake shot out at my feet, unnerving me just a trifle more. But I kept on, watching for the path when I came upon a thin, young boy about nine years old, alone and dressed in a white shirt and black pants. I asked him in Italian where the Cave was. He made no reply, but looked me straight in the eye and then slowly raised a long, skinny arm and pointed back the way I had come: in my anxiety I had missed the

Sleeping with the Mummy

203

path. I retraced my steps, found the path, and with my heart beating faster, I tramped through the foliage and saw just ahead an iron door, green with age. I pushed at the door but it was locked, the entrance to the Cave was blocked. But I knew that I didn’t need to go farther: the Sibyl in her own mysterious way had revealed her presence and through her patron had cast a spell. The second of my visits to an ancient shrine was to Delphi, north-west of Athens, also the shrine of Apollo where his prophetess, huddled over a tripod, used to utter in ecstasy a tangle of words, later to be ambiguously translated by the attendant priests. In this forbidding mountain site overlooking the Saronic Gulf I saw neither prophetess nor priests nor much less Apollo, but climbing up the Sacred Way I could visualize the multitude of pilgrims twenty-five centuries before making their way up from the sea, with me in their company, and depositing their rich and varied votive offerings along the way. Yet here too as I looked up at Mount Parnassus, there was no doubt that I felt, like so many others I have questioned, both around and above me some strange and awful presence. And the same feeling came over me on each visit afterwards. My most bizarre experience was my trip to the shrine of Zeus at Dodona in northern Greece. Dodona is not easily accessible, but I traveled by car up the small coastal road on the west side of mainland Greece. I had a tiny Japanese car, a Mitsubishu, that performed wonderfully well all the way. The weather was perfect until I came within ten miles of my destination, then, just as I was climbing the steep mountain road, the skies suddenly closed and Zeus, the sky god, poured down a blinding rush of wind and water. Rather than stopping and turning off to find a place for the night I forged ahead, determined to reach the isolated spot by late afternoon. As I approached the site, the raging rain and wind abruptly stopped and I saw an eagle, the traditional symbol of Zeus, soaring and circling high above the temple compound. I parked the car and made for what had been the temple, or rather I was led to it by the eagle, which had descended and swooped low, straight over his ancient abode, and then as rapidly vanished from sight. Except

204

The Greater Glory

for that strange presence I was completely alone. Shaken, I stayed only a few minutes but returned the next day, this time in company with many fellow tourists. I had a more benign experience on the Island of Ithaca, home of the mythical Odysseus. In Homer’s epic, Odysseus returns to his home island by stealth and lands near the Cave of the Nymphs. The traditional but disputed spot is located near the headlands of the harbour of Vathi. It is not really a cave but an enclosed area open to the sky. I visited it on a beautiful, bright day in May when the soft grass was laden with wild flowers that the bees were feasting upon. Near the steep sides of the enclosure were natural flat stone slabs, tombs, no doubt, of the departed nymphs. With the sea just below, I sat down alone on the grass, quietly taking in all about me and going over in my memory the passage in Homer’s text. Suddenly a flock of swallows came from above and made several turns around the enclosure. Could they have been the nymphs to whom Odysseus prayed so long ago? My visit to Meteora, the site in mainland Greece of the cluster of Christian monasteries teetering on the tops of cliffs that arise straight up from the valleys, was a peaceful and reassuring experience. Built by the monks in late medieval times, they were accessible only by rope and basket until recently when a few were opened to visitors by means of winding roads. The numbers of the monks now are few, but they were friendly and kind, and I had a sense of goodness and greater tranquility in their company that I had not felt before in the many ancient shrines I had visited. My first trip to the Troy of Homer took me to Izmir in Turkey, the ancient Smyrna, and I made my way to the bus station with the intention of going along the coast to the famed site. Off we went through the city and into the countryside at an ever increasing and alarming speed, the other passengers staring at me, the intruder. We hadn’t gone far when the bus came to a jolting stop and a platoon of soldiers with machine guns at the ready jumped from the ditch, surrounded the bus, ordered us out and lined us up facing in towards the bus. Tension between Turkey and Greece, always just below the surface, was at a fever pitch then, and I had just come from Greece the day before. The officer grabbed my

Sleeping with the Mummy

205

passport and immediately saw that I was an inoffensive Canadian, perhaps not noticing that I had been in Greece, no doubt conspiring with Greek Intelligence. In any case we were all waved back aboard and the antique bus roared off once again. No one else on the bus was in the least perturbed by the incident. I soon discovered why when the same procedure happened at least twice more that day. Along the way I noticed scores of labourers at work in the fields, all women, all squatting in their multi-coloured pantaloons, digging weeds and thinning the vegetable plants. I saw no men there except a few supervisors, but later in the towns I saw them sitting outside the cafes drawing on their hookahs. That night around ten I got out of the bus to spend the night at a tiny inn I had seen from the window. I walked through the open door but couldn’t find the concierge until I explored the passageway and found him in a small room at the end praying on his oriental mat. I waited until he was finished and he quickly found me a room with two sliver-width single beds. There wasn’t another stick of furniture in the room, and I soon discovered that I was not the first to use the sheets. Hungry and exhausted I crawled in fully clothed and soon fell asleep. The price for my night’s sleep was sixteen cents Canadian. On another trip to Troy and the imperial Roman provinces of the East I took one of the last trips of the Orient Express from Saloniki in Greece to its terminus in Istanbul. At that time the famous train consisted merely of a few dilapidated coaches. The long trip to the border was beautiful but uneventful as it wound round the northern coasts of Greece. About seven p.m. we reached the Turkish border and the train jerked to a stop. Customs and immigration officials jumped aboard and scrupulously questioned and checked every passenger. As there couldn’t have been more than thirty of us, even with assiduous checking they were finished in an hour. Then the fun began. Feigning friendliness, a couple of these men sat down beside me and in broken English asked me to play poker. Suspecting that they would skin me of my limited money supply I politely declined but they insisted and upon my further refusal they became nasty and demanded that I play with them. I

206

The Greater Glory

again firmly refused, alleging fatigue. Finally, they gave up on me, got up and stormed away. Fortunately by this time I had my clearance across the border or I might never have obtained it. In my tiny compartment I tied my money belt tightly and fell into an uneasy sleep, only to be roughly disturbed three or four times during the night with fumblings about my person. In Istanbul, I wandered slowly about the incredible city, thrilled to view the church of Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, built in the sixth century in the time of the Emperor Justinian. It stands apart with its three sets of ascending arches that carry the enormous dome and the exquisite mosaics that cover the upper walls and inner dome. They were crudely whitewashed after the fall of the city in 1453 and the church was transformed into a mosque and finally into a museum. Just before I was there the Turkish Government had given permission to uncover the mosaics, which now shone as if they had never been concealed during all those centuries. I went on from Istanbul across the beautiful bridge over the Bosphorus and into the vast regions of Asiatic Turkey. Thence, crossing the narrow strip of water that separates Turkey and Greece I moved away from the tension that existed between those two countries and went on to the Greek island of Mytilene or what used to be known as Lesbos. The statue of its most famous citizen, Sappho, stands in the harbour, and when I was there two American warships were anchored and the crews were on shoreleave. I wondered what Sappho would have made of American sailors strolling two-by-two up and down the streets, seeking a companionship that was quite different from her own. I then went on to nearby Chios, one of the many sites claimed to be Homer’s birthplace, to visit the relatives of some Greek friends in Montreal. On the way to their small farm, I saw a tall, elderly man hoeing in his field. He strikingly resembled the busts I had seen of Plato and other classical philosophers with their furrowed brows and fine, aristocratic features, symbolic of the Greece that I imagined existed 2,600 years ago. In these biennial trips I would fly back to Paris or London and spend several weeks doing research in the Bibliothèque Nationale or the British Museum Library. Both were experiences I looked

Sleeping with the Mummy

207

forward to and treasured because once you got used to the system in each place, any imaginable book, article, or manuscript that I wanted or needed, was available. But first you had to learn the system. The initial step was to present a letter from your university with your credentials and an outline of the project you were researching. With this approval you were photographed and presented with a library card with a time limit of a year or two indicated, and then after passing through a guard inspection, you went on to the Reading Room. In Paris the Bibliothèque was housed in a fine building in the rue de Richelieu, and the Reading Room on the main floor used to be, I was told, the ballroom of the mansion. The chairs were comfortable, the desks ample and well lit by lamps with green glass shades, but these pleasant surroundings were not what I had come for. I had a list of books and journals I wanted to consult, but the card indices, I soon found out, were on the ground floor, down a lovely winding marble staircase from the Reading Room. The index cards were arranged in cabinets in pull-out drawers arranged alphabetically, but, disconcertingly, they were arranged not in the same set of cabinets but in different cabinets according to the years of their acquisition by the library. There was certainly no way that I or most visiting scholars could know in what year a particular book was acquired by the Bibliothèque. There were three or four sets of cabinets. The first set ran, say, up to 1600, the second to 1800, and so on. I had to make an educated guess as to the year of publication of the material I wished to consult, hoping that soon afterwards it would have been acquired by the library, but there was no guarantee of this. Since I was often dealing with early material I frequently had to consult all the sets of cabinets, beginning with the first. To make things worse, the library was open only for restricted hours and my stay in Paris was limited. The trick was to keep the books I was using on reserve and work on them while I was waiting for a new batch that I would order as soon as I came in for the morning’s work. In that way I always had something to work on at my desk right up until closing time. For my stay in Paris I lived with the Jesuits at their large house in la rue de Grenelle. I very much enjoyed walking back and forth

208

The Greater Glory

to the Library, often stopping at a famous church or dropping in for a short visit to the antiquities in The Louvre. The Jesuits at the rue de Grenelle were quite friendly and were happy when you tried to speak their language. They were astute enough to appoint an American brother to be in charge of visitors. He had been born in the United States of French parents, had served in the American army during the war, and had entered the Jesuits in France. At the time the house was having financial difficulties and it had taken to charging their visitors a modest daily stipend for their keep. As they were short of staff, the community had to fend for themselves in the dining room, resorting to huge aluminum warmers with sliding doors for their food. There was a bit of a rush towards those warmers at dinner time, but the food was adequate though simple. Apart from the visitors there was quite a medley of Jesuits in residence, some of whom were fine scholars in the true French classical tradition. In alternate years I spent several weeks in London and stayed with the Jesuits there, usually in their Farm Street residence. My purpose was to go to the British Library each day and do some research for articles and a book I was planning. Once upon my arrival in London, I came down with a fever that I had picked up in Greece. The rector at the time had been an officer in the British army and in the few days I was laid up he had the doctor come in and he visited me in my room each day. There was a mixture of Jesuits in the house as in Paris, and many writers and intellectuals lived there full time. Among these notables were Bishop Goodier, formerly Archbishop of Bombay, the author of many books, and Martin D’Arcy, philosopher and theologian. When I first met Father D’Arcy he was already elderly but still alert and delighted to engage visitors in conversation. As head of the English Province of Jesuits he had chosen the great English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to design Campion Hall in Oxford. It was a fine building in the interior, and Lutyens managed to pull off a few tricks on their future owners, such as the rosettes on the ceiling in the dining room where he said the Jesuits would be acting typically, eating “sub rosa.” At table in these his final years, half way into a discussion Fr D’Arcy’s

Sleeping with the Mummy

209

head would slowly fall lower and lower until a bump on the table would bring it up again. I walked the twenty minutes each day to the British Library, then housed in the British Museum. Despite my pass I was checked each time before I was allowed to go through into the Reading Room where so many famous authors had toiled before me. As in the Biobliothèque Nationale the seats were comfortable, the lighting bright. There too I had to plan carefully to avail myself of the short time, reserving books for the next day and ordering new material the day before. At that time all entries, books, periodicals, etc. were to be found on cards or more often on pieces (scraps) of paper written in pen or often in pencil and pasted, in rough alphabetical order, onto pages in huge volumes, like scrap books. These black volumes were attached to a cable to prevent removal by unscrupulous scholars, but everything was there in some form or other, anything published in England since printing began, and much more from other countries and in other languages. If you could find what you wanted it was a treasure trove. As I sat at my desk one day under that luminous glass dome, a woman with straggled hair and an intense look, and wearing a dirty raincoat tied tightly round her waist with a rope, peered over my shoulder. She quickly drew back with a terrified expression when I looked at her. Later, I asked the attendant if he knew who she was. “O yes,” he said, “the lady comes in most days. She broke down years ago doing research on her own project, but she’s still interested in everybody else’s work. You’re new here, so she simply wanted to know what you were about.” In the final few days before returning to Canada, my dear friend Fr Cyril O’Keefe, who had been studying in Paris, and I would occasionally go north to Scotland and play a few games of golf at some of the famous courses. At that time access to St Andrews, Carnoustie, and Troon was quite easy, and the green fees were still wonderfully low, close to a single pound, as the tiny tickets issued at the time and which I keep in my wallet to this day, testify. We stayed either at the rectories of Catholic parishes or local bed and breakfasts for minimum charge, and even the British trains in the late sixties were most affordable.

210

The Greater Glory

Father O’Keefe and I went further north to Inverness and beyond and then cut across and down the west side of Scotland on a narrow, mountainous road along the coast with countless twists and turns. Once we stopped at what seemed a kind of restaurant and entered a large, high-ceilinged room where there were only two people, the manager behind a counter and standing in the centre of the room a huge man with flaming red hair, dressed in a voluminous kilt and grasping a long staff. With feet apart and the staff firmly on the floor, the laird – who else could he have been? – glared at us and without a word stomped away. I spent part of a sabbatical year at Campion Hall in Oxford. I had come over to England to give a paper at the Patristic Conference that was held every four years. Since Campion Hall was already filled with Jesuit scholars, I was billeted at Magdalen College in beautiful quarters overlooking the main quad, not far from Oscar Wilde’s staircase. I stayed there for several weeks, doing some work and taking a daily walk after lunch past the deer park and down along the river and up through Christ Church Meadow. It was a pleasant experience, not least because I could view the wonderful tower of the Magdalen Chapel from my window. I moved over to Campion Hall in September just before the students began to filter in for their Michaelmas term, making arrangements with Fr Bursar for my room and board. One of the first questions he asked me was whether I wanted a “fire,” single or double. I was baffled for a moment as to what he meant, and then realizing that he meant an electric heater, I was glad I chose a double, as November and then December came on. The heat in my room was turned on only in the early morning and late afternoon, coming up through the floor – another of Lutyens’ ideas – very comfortable when it came but too expensive to be maintained throughout the day and night. The community was a cheerful group, mainly Catholic priests from the Commonwealth and Africa, most of them preparing for an advanced degree in theology. The permanent residents, as well as the master and bursar, were English Jesuits. The senior tutor, who had garnered a double first in classics in his day, was nowhere to be seen except in the very early morning, wildly cycling off to

Sleeping with the Mummy

211

do gardening at a friend’s estate. Apparently he had broken down many years before. There were some very bright Jesuits there but many seemed unable to produce scholarly books, intimidated perhaps, no doubt unconsciously, by the great names about them. I used to invite one or other of these fellows or another “colonial” out for a walk after lunch. We would walk for many miles, often along the tow path of the river but usually in a different direction each day, moving along briskly and covering any topic that came to mind, including Canadian and Quebec politics. I enjoyed these hearty walks immensely, but I was surprised that although most were engaged in some interesting academic project, few were far advanced in it, seeming to be held back by a strange kind of inertia. One of the great (and productive) scholars in residence was Fr Fred Copleston, the author of the fine series of volumes on the philosophers. He was a modest, friendly man who always came to tea at four and was interested in anyone who cared to talk. If I arrived at sharp four I could not only speak with Fred Copleston but also help myself to a slice of a huge cake. In the late fall Campion Hall had a visitor, a Jesuit official from Rome who came on a kind of inspection tour of the Jesuit houses in the British Isles. This man was a Canadian – in fact, my old rector, with whom I had clashed on several occasions in the past. To many English Jesuits, Canadian officials were looked upon with trepidation as a few years before another Canadian had called for the closing of several English Jesuit schools. After lunch one day my old nemesis asked me to take him to a shop in Oxford where he might buy a pair of sandals. Why someone from Rome would want to buy sandals in England sounded strange to me, but off we went. With winter approaching, most shoe stores had no sandals, and of those that did the choice was limited. He tried on pair after pair in shop after shop. In the seventh, I spied a barrel of sandals in a corner, stuffed in helter-skelter, all on sale. My man rummaged through this pile and fidgeted to match pairs, and finally made a choice, two pounds and two hours after the quest had begun. Most morning and late afternoons I spent in the Bodleian Library. I had hoped to write a book on Lactantius during my

212

The Greater Glory

sabbatical, selections from his works and a commentary, which was tentatively accepted by the Oxford University Press upon completion. Unfortunately, I never finished my work. More and more I could not focus for more than an hour on the work in front of me, and I began to feel that I was, like the woman in the raincoat at the British Library, breaking down. I became dispirited as I was unable to study, much less, write, with the result that I reluctantly decided that I would not stay at Oxford for the full sabbatical year but return home to Montreal by Christmas. One of the highlights of my academic career came when I was invited to deliver a paper in France at an assembly of scholars of the Later Roman Empire. It was sponsored by the Sorbonne and was held outside of Paris at the beautiful old Rothschild estate. I was rather nervous about my delivery as my French wasn’t of a high calibre, but the presentation in fact went fairly well until the question period, which was conducted entirely in French. The organizer of the convention was a distinguished French classicist of the Later Roman Empire, a professor at the Sorbonne, Jacques Fontaine. When he saw that I was having difficulty with the questions that were being asked not only in the clear but uvular French of France but also in the peculiar French accents of Germans, Italians, and especially Greeks, he quietly came up next to me at the podium, and gently and clearly repeated or rather summarized the questions for me. This was a magnanimity that I have not often experienced in the academic world where there exist many jealousies and betrayals. One of the features of this Lactantius Colloquium was the opportunity to elaborate on the questions asked during the sessions and reply in writing before the papers were published. This proved very helpful because I had the good fortune to know a psychologist very knowledgeable in statistics, Professor Morris Shames, an old friend who sadly died prematurely. He corroborated my findings by the use of statistical curves. The grounds of the old Rothschild estate were ideal for walking, although they were not as trim as in the past with their army of gardeners. During the Second World War the estate had been commandeered by the Germans, acting as the headquarters for a

Sleeping with the Mummy

213

time of Hermann Goering, and on the banks of a stream running through the property were massive bunkers and air-raid shelters. Goering had pilfered many pieces of the Rothschild art collection, but some of them had been returned and once again hung in the beautiful drawing rooms.

13 The Greater Glory

back in montreal at the Jesuit Residence on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University I had a pleasant room on the sixth floor looking out over some trees towards West Broadway. It was next to the little chapel where the community gathered to celebrate Mass on feast days, and I often dropped in to pray before the Sacred Presence before I went to my room next door. There was also a small library that contained mainly theological books helpful for general reading and the composition of sermons. On the top floor were the dining room, kitchen, and a large comfortable common room. After an early supper at 5:45, some members of the community would gather to relax and engage in an exchange of thoughts and ideas that the work of the day might have suggested. Many, perhaps most, did not attend these gatherings, except on special occasions. I suppose that it was rather tedious seeing or talking with the same persons day after day, but I found it interesting and generally stimulating as it was a disparate group. There were college professors and administrators, high school teachers and a principal, and a tangle of others, retired priests who had much to offer from their long experiences, visitors, and a few more engaged in various ministries in the city. It was a pity that more didn’t come to that hour after supper as it was often the only chance, apart from the time of meals, to meet face to face with those who lived in the same community and to reinforce the spirit of camaradarie and charity that Ignatius wanted so earnestly for

The Greater Glory

215

members of his Order. Other Jesuit communities in which I lived or visited both in Canada and abroad seemed to be closer and more united than what I experienced in over twenty years at Loyola. The members of that community were friendly when met in the hall or common room, but most seemed to be so busy and preoccupied that you could live next to a person for a dozen years and not know a single thing that went on in his head or heart. Some of this remoteness perhaps went back to the dire warnings in the early training against being too friendly with one or another of one’s fellows. In my time the possibility of forming close and healthy friendships was not discussed. I think that over us hung the maxim of the novitiate, “numquam duo, semper tres” (never two together but always three). I don’t wish to exaggerate this over-hang because compelling and more immediate reasons for this aloofness were no doubt operative, such as fatigue, over-work, or simply involvement in the ministries at hand. But whatever the reason, companionship suffered. I was, nevertheless, fortunate to have a few close friends in the Order, although for the most part they happened to be stationed in other cities in Canada than Montreal, mainly Toronto. Foremost among them was, first of all, Fr Alan Peterkin, whom I had known during the entire period of our growing up together in Winnipeg. He was a very talented person, musically and socially, and as a priest he performed exceedingly well in his ministry whether as a hospital chaplain, parish priest, or preacher. He had a wonderful sense of humour that often verged on the bizarre, and he made a host of friends wherever he went. It is unfortunate that I have not been able to keep in touch with him since I left the Order. A second close and dear friend was Fr Remi Limoges from Montreal. He too was talented in many ways, and possessed the best traits of both French and English from his French-Canadian father and Irish-Canadian mother. He had a very clear and logical brain, and possessed a great warmth of personality. At present they are still alive, though retired, and living in Toronto. I miss them both greatly. A third friend who was stationed with me at the Loyola Residence was my golfing companion, Fr Cyril O’Keefe, a European historian,

216

The Greater Glory

specifically of the l’ancien régime in France. Most evenings after the time of recreation we would go for an hour’s walk, whatever the weather might be. Walking briskly, we would cover a wide range of topics and not always on the heavy and serious side that preoccupied us during the day. We had many games of golf together, and although he had taken it up after the age of forty, he would often play in the nineties. Cyril wrote well, clearly and succinctly, producing many articles and several books in his field, and his death of a brain tumor at the age of sixty was a loss to scholarship but more poignantly to his few close friends. Later in my stay at Loyola I became good friends with a distinguished American Jesuit from New England, Fr Michael Fahey, a recent winner of the prestigious John Courtney Murray medal in theology, who came to fill a posting in the Department of Theology at Concordia. He has been a constant and loyal friend through the years. Another friend I was fortunate to have was Fr Gerald Tait. In his late thirties he had gone to the University of Strasburg for a doctorate in theology and had rather remarkably completed it in two years under the famous French theologian Maurice Nédoncelle. He served the Order loyally in Canada in a variety of posts, including president of the Jesuit School of Theology in Toronto. Unlike some others of my friends in the Order he never failed to contact me and go out to lunch each time he came to Montreal. To him and a few others, like Michael Fahey, I remained a friend, and whether in or out of the Order it made no difference. Living at close quarters with a group of busy Jesuits could be trying at times, but I never found it as irksome as did some others. You always had to try to accommodate yourself to the needs and desires of the rest, and often to give way, but that is true of any family. One thing I did find hard in the community was signing up for the use of one of the house cars on a board located just outside the dining room. You were required to mark down what car you signed up for, how long you wanted it and where you were going in case others might want to tag along. Letting everybody know your private business was annoying enough. Worse was the gathering of various members of the community, particularly those who did not drive, around this board, the “tabella” as it was called.

The Greater Glory

217

They would comment on the frequency of certain names on the board and the inordinate length of time marked down for the car’s use. Scarcely anyone passed the board without at least a fleeting glance as to who was going where. At the time of student unrest in the sixties Loyola College was not immune. The cause of a certain professor Dr. Santhanham, whose contract for the following year was for various reasons not to be renewed, was taken up by both students and faculty. Large and noisy demonstrations were held on campus until the entire university body was split right down the centre. Since Loyola was still run and owned by the Jesuit Order, the animus turned quite naturally against the Jesuits, whose residence was on the northwest end of the campus. In their frustration and anger at the matter not being resolved, the protesters marched on the Jesuit residence to demand that Dr Santhanham’s contract be renewed. There must have been 200 to 300 marchers, yelling and banging on the door of the residence and calling for the Jesuit president, Fr Patrick Malone, to come down and meet them. Fr Malone, either by chance or design, was out of town, so Fr Cecil Ryan, rector of the community, appeared to face the mob. He was a strong, athletic man who was afraid of nothing. He slowly and calmly stepped out of the elevator and turned towards the student leaders who had been let in the door. I was in the house at the time and was watching from the parapet the milling crowd seven stories below. Other Jesuits were with me, some apprehensive but most unperturbed. I looked down and was astounded to see some of the students I had taught in the high school standing in line behind the crowd, but I was to learn later that these fellows, some of them football players, were there to protect their old Jesuit teachers in case a rush were made on the residence. As I watched, the student leaders emerged from the building and addressed a few words to the crowd, which slowly and quietly turned and dispersed. What had transpired with Fr Ryan, I don’t know, but the crisis was over at least for a time. Later, there was a bombing at the end of one building that blew up several police cars. No one was killed or even injured, and the riot police dispersed the crowd that had occupied the

218

The Greater Glory

administration building. Remarkably, the bombing was not reported by the press. Over the course of my years in the Order, I knew or at least had met six or seven hundred Jesuits. They had all entered the Order with a mixture of motives, most of them noble, with the goal of becoming priests and serving God and their fellow man in one or other of the ministries the Jesuits were noted for, teaching, research, missionary work. Their first desire, I believe, and it was true in my case, was to become a priest, and secondly to take up the particular work that was assigned or perhaps the ministry that they had wished and asked for. For some there seemed to be a dichotomy between being a priest and pursuing the intellectual life, as if the latter were inconsonant with more visibly priestly activities. For myself I never saw any dichotomy, nor fortunately did those in governing positions. The foremost of the intellectuals whom I met in my time in the Order was Father Bernard Lonergan. I had taken a course from him in my early years of study at the Jesuit Seminary in Toronto when he was working on his great work, Insight. His intellect soared far and beyond anyone’s I had ever encountered. With his deep, penetrating voice he was an excellent lecturer, very clear, very logical. He went to Rome soon afterwards to teach at the Jesuit Gregorian University, and I did not see him until he returned many years later for a cancer operation that removed one of his lungs (he had been a heavy smoker). By this time I was ordained, and in the priests’ recreation room at Regis College, I once faced him across the bridge table. After his bid, he scrutinized me and waited for my reply. I knew that he didn’t suffer fools gladly but also I did not intend to be intimidated. We made the contract, and the spell was broken. In fact it turned out that his theology far surpassed his skill at the bridge table. When Fr Lonergan was later lecturing at Harvard, my friend Gerald Tait arranged for a few of us to drive down and visit him in Boston for his birthday in early December. During our long and spirited discussions enlivened by his hearty laugh that at times became a kind of cackle, he was most gracious and appreciative of our visit, as it was believed by some, though never expressed by

The Greater Glory

219

himself, that he had been somewhat slighted by the Canadian Jesuits. Lonergan had and still has a huge following among scholars, previously mainly among Catholics but now considerably expanded, although he has had his vigorous and eminent critics over the years. The influence of Lonergan on Canadian Jesuits was and is enormous, as is seen by the thriving Lonergan Research Institute in Toronto, manned by a small band of Jesuits. One of his great fans was his brother Greg, also a Jesuit, who typed some of Bernard’s early manuscripts, and it is Greg who told me that when they were growing up in Buckingham, Quebec, Bernie was of rather ordinary intelligence until one day when he was twelve years old he was struck on the head by a huge log while the two boys were playing in the nearby mill. After that, Bernard came to be known as “Brains” Lonergan. Another intellectual who lived at Loyola while I was there was Fr Eric O’Connor. He was a mathematician who had raced through his doctorate at Harvard in one and a half years, and after teaching mathematics that was far over their heads to undergraduates at Loyola College, he veered off into founding Thomas More College, an innovative institution for adult education where his numerous talents were fully engaged. Remaining in undergraduate work would have been his downfall. Several other intellectual Jesuits included Bernard O’Kelly, Tom Hoey, and Sean McEvenue, all of whom broke down for various reasons and chose to leave the Order. (I have remained close with Sean McEvenue, an accomplished Old Testament scholar, who has retired from Concordia and lives in Louisiana.) A few other bright Jesuits who were intelligent if not intellectual broke down completely and became pitiable hulks for the remainder of their days. On the other hand many very clever men, perhaps sensing a similar disaster, abandoned the intellectual life and never seemed to read a serious book again. The works of distinguished European Jesuits such as Karl Rahner and Teilhard de Chardin were kept hidden from us during our theological studies in the 1950s, but of course they have come to be known since the Second Vatican Council. Even twenty-five years ago a few of us Canadian Jesuits paid a visit to Teilhard’s grave in the Jesuit cemetery in Poughkeepsie,

220

The Greater Glory

New York, and today his picture hangs in the Jesuit Regis College in Toronto. Some of the most talented men I knew chose to travel far off to the Canadian Jesuit Mission in Darjeeling, India. Only a handful, they ran a staggering array of colleges, high schools, orphanages, and parishes. The one I knew best was Gerry McDonough, sick all his life but possessing tremendous energy and imagination. His work among the poor of Calcutta is legendary. He was forever running into and confronting government red tape and inefficiency. He visited the refugee camps during the troubles between India and East Pakistan, and seeing the huge mounds of refuse piling up in one camp, he attempted to persuade the people sitting nearby to remove or bury the decaying, dangerous mess. They, fearing contamination, not from the garbage but from the lower castes, would not be drawn. He therefore donned his liturgical robes and with the help of a few other Christians toiled for several days in the scorching heat digging pits until the huge mass was safely buried and out of sight. The Jesuits have had a long and controversial history and depending on the writer, it was either glorious or inglorious. Over the centuries since its inception in 1540, never has any institution in the Catholic Church been more praised and more maligned: the truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between these two poles. Most of the men I encountered and lived with in those years in the Jesuit Upper Canadian Province, as I have said earlier, were of Irish-Canadian or, to a lesser extent, French-Canadian descent. Although the Jesuits in France had fought furiously against the rigorist doctrines propagated by the Jansenists until they were finally condemned by the Church, in my opinion many of the young men and Jesuit superiors I lived with did not or could not shake off the noxious influence of this harsh and ultimately heretical doctrine that they had imbibed from their own parents and from their parish priests who were trained in seminaries tainted with Jansenism. The strongest impelling force of the Jesuits that Ignatius stressed throughout his constitutions was love, namely “the interior law of charity, love of God, love of our fellow man and love of

The Greater Glory

221

fellow members of the Society of Jesus.” To this end Ignatius and the “generals,” that is the head superiors of the Order who followed him, set in place several instruments, first the “spiritual exercises,” the month-long retreat for the complete reformation and reorientation of a novice’s soul and spirit at the beginning of his religious life, then the daily meditation plus two examinations of conscience each day to ascertain where one went wrong during the waking hours and a determination to improve in the next twelve hours. As I have discussed earlier, I made these gruelling spiritual exercises twice in my lifetime but later I refused to go through them a third time, although urged to do so by many. In any case, Ignatius had advised that they be gone through only once. Added to these spiritual duties to further a love of God and our neighbour was, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, the “manifestation of conscience,” an institution that went back to the time of the monk Cassian, a complete openness to the superior, especially during his yearly visit, on all and everything that went on in one’s soul during the past year in order to determine what was best for that individual spiritually, mentally and physically both then and in the future. In my experience the superiors chosen for that delicate and important task varied in skill and perception, and in a recent group like the Jesuit Upper Canadian Province, which had been established only in the 1920s, there always was a scarcity of capable men to fill that role when the geography and the large number of Jesuit houses extended across the entire continent. Overworked and undermanned, they would have found it difficult to look beyond their vast borders and take in the more universal perspective that Jesuits are reputed to enjoy. Perhaps as a remnant of their Jansenistic upbringing and training, they tended to be strict and interpret the rules and documents of the Order too literally, quite unlike their brothers in Rome and other Latin locations. Bishops were forever calling on the Jesuits to fill important slots in their dioceses, and it was hard to refuse, even with so few members available and not many of them capable of assuming important responsibilities. On a day-to-day basis, furthermore, solid spiritual direction from a fellow Jesuit priest was very hard to come by. In all my

222

The Greater Glory

years in the Order there was only a handful who really were adept in spiritual discernment. There were three areas in which most were completely at a loss. All three were taken directly from Ignatius’ spiritual exercises. The first was “The Rules for the Discernment of Spirits,” that is, how to know whether the spirit that animated you was from above or from below, in other words, how to perceive a good spirit from a bad. In my experience, most never bothered in the least about this important spiritual discernment in Ignatius’ arsenal. The only thing that I ever learned was that the good spirit came quietly and gently and brought peace and tranquility, while the evil spirit brought the opposite, desolation, frustration, confusion, and sadness. The second lacuna in most of the Jesuits I knew was their lack of using and applying a very helpful and practical method of deciding what was the best course of proceeding in any matter of importance. This method was contained in the latter part of Ignatius’ text, and was called “The Rules of Election.” Some of them consisted in the rather obvious but useful placing in opposite columns the pros and cons of a prospective decision. More should have been made of these rules, and I regret not having studied them much more carefully myself. The third area that was left largely unexplored, perhaps because it required consummate skill to apply, was the “Three Degrees of Humility.” Spelled out in the “exercises” the first two degrees were difficult but the third and highest was one that required extraordinary perfection or at least the desire for what was considered the highest form of perfection. It was supposed to lead to the very zenith of spiritual perfection, and yet by that very token it posed immense danger and the potential for spiritual and physical disaster. I have discussed this Third Degree before but because its implications affected me so deeply, I will repeat the words of Ignatius himself from the rules of the Jesuit constitutions: “To the end that this degree of perfection be attained … let it be each one’s chief and earnest endeavor in all things, as far as he can, to seek in the Lord his own greater abnegation and continual mortification.” In other words, a member of the Order, if he seeks high perfection, should constantly deny and mortify himself in all things,

The Greater Glory

223

and so he should strive for and seek out poverty, humiliations, and self abnegation. Concomitant with and restricting this ideal, of course, were the phrases that, first and above all, this was to be accomplished in the abiding presence of the suffering Christ, and second, the norm was to be applied “as far he can.” Now to offer this formula to young eighteen-year-old novices, eager to achieve perfection, or even to offer it to a prudent and older member without competent and constant supervision could lead and often did lead to disaster. When and how often was this ideal to be applied? Did “as far as he can” apply in most cases? That way madness lay. And this striving was all above and beyond the pressure to obey the multitude of rules and ordinances as well as to perform the practical tasks of reading, writing, teaching, cleaning, whatever. The Jesuit rules of themselves, except the vows of course, do not bind under sin, and that was wisely insisted upon by the master of novices from the beginning. In the absence of strict and firm direction, how and when was the ideal of seeking out the harder and more penitential path to be applied? Combined with many other difficult aspects of the life this was surely one added factor that did cause many men to break down under the burden, both mentally and physically. Later, some turned in anguish to drink, others sank into depression. Over the years, I encountered only two or three Jesuits competent in this delicate field. I do not want to exaggerate the intensity of my own feelings and strivings: they were strongest in the early years of the novitiate and then later in the final year of tertianship. Yet even in the years between and afterwards that were occupied with studies and teaching, they were still there, pullulating under the surface and ready to come up in weak and unguarded moments. However, despite this undercurrent, I experienced much happiness in living the life of a Jesuit, and I would say that most often I felt cheerful. And I tried to be cheerful when the black dog of depression was beginning to become heavier and heavier. Depression is known in religious parlance as “desolation.” No one in religious life wants to be in desolation even for a short spell but it was considered to be

224

The Greater Glory

part of normal living, as it is with everyone everywhere. I prayed to return to the feeling of “consolation,” but although I was quite aware that individuals like Teresa of Avila went through years of desolation, I realized that in my case the black moods were deeper than what were considered normal and common to all. The phenomenon was strange because I thought that I was settled and happy in my vocation: I enjoyed university teaching and devoting whatever time I had to research, I had good relations with most of my colleagues in the classics department – I even enjoyed committee work, I had a few good friends and some relatives in Montreal, I had the support and affection, I felt, of most of my fellow Jesuits in the house and a few closer friends in Toronto, and lastly I was happy to have the love and support of my family whom I had the good fortune to visit every year, while helping out on Sundays in a nearby parish. I also got to know and love my nephews and nieces, eighteen of them, no less, and eventually I performed the marriages of at least four of them. However, during one of those visits I was greatly saddened by the death of my father with whom I was also very close, especially in his latter years. I also carried out some specifically priestly ministries during the year, saying Mass once a week for the students and staff at Loyola at noon and visiting sick friends in the hospitals. I remember vividly visiting Karl Stern, the Austrian psychiatrist, after his stroke. He was completely broken in body and spirit, and it was sad to see in such a state this noble man who had brought back to a happy life so many of his patients. These were all very positive factors in my life for which I am very grateful, but as the years went on a deepening shadow of depression closed in over me, despite the many pleasant aspects of my life, and despite my efforts to banish the darkness from my mind and soul. One of the accusations often leveled against the Jesuits was that they were secretive, that they were always planning and plotting some dire action to spring upon their unsuspecting enemies and even friends. It is true that Jesuits generally kept to themselves and lived a very private life: perhaps the accusation emanated at least partially from one of their rules that reads: “No one should relate to outsiders what is done or to be done in the house unless he

The Greater Glory

225

knows the Superior approves of it.” This was a common regulation in all religious institutes reaching back to early times, and it seems to mean little more than the usual practice among families not to reveal indiscriminately its intimate domestic affairs. The restriction in the Jesuits, however, was wider and was applied rather over cautiously to most of the documentation of the Order, constitutions, rules, letters, etc. which were labeled “Ad usum nostrorum tantum” (For the use of ours, i.e. Jesuits, only). Even the word “ours” smacks of the elite, and to have so much included under this category suggests self-importance. I don’t know whether the same rule holds today, and I can’t imagine that it does in this age of no privacy, but undoubtedly there are still some matters that are private and should be confined to the Jesuit family only. In my opinion there were serious deficiencies in the Jesuit Order, especially in the formation to which I was subjected over the fourteen years in the late forties and fifties of the last century. The goals and aspirations of the Jesuits were and still are noble and inspiring, but some of the methods used to attain those goals did not seem to be appropriate to the twentieth century. Perhaps the manner of life has changed in the twenty years since I left the Order, and I would applaud whatever has been done towards moderation. I know that there now exists a strong movement among the Jesuits to improve the spiritual direction that Ignatius had insisted upon from the beginning. However, the old methods that I experienced seemed rather to suit a simpler society such as existed up to the beginning of the Second World War. Many of the men I lived with after 1945 simply could not adjust to a system that verged on the monastic and had been developed after the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814 under the Dutch General, Jan Roothaan. It is impossible to say whether Ignatius would have approved of the rigorous and cooped-up life in the training period of my time – the regime he inaugurated was in fact much more open and shorter than the “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d” existence that I went through: minimal communication with one’s family, very little activity outside the house, few contacts with relations or friends, checking and reporting on one another, and in general a cloistered type of life throughout the long period of

226

The Greater Glory

training. The sad result was that many broke down either during the long program of studies or afterwards as if by delayed reaction. The first tiny crack in the system that I noticed happened in the mid-sixties – after Vatican II – when the community at Loyola assembled in the domestic chapel before supper for the recitation of the Litanies, which, of course, were said in Latin. Each week a different priest would be called upon to take his turn racing through the recitation – the speed was ostensibly to prevent distraction. Despite the speed, I liked the Litanies because they were devotional and possessed a rhythmical beauty. One evening as I was about to enter the chapel a trifle late, I noticed four or five of the scholastics standing in the corridor outside the chapel. This seeming gesture of defiance, I later realized, stemmed from their belief that this kind of narrative Latin prayer that was raced through every night had lost its meaning and should be discarded and replaced with a more appropriate and modern type of spiritual activity. Something had happened with that gesture, something that would have been unthinkable a very few years before, but it would be a long time before major changes would be made in the regimen of Jesuit life. There were other features in the Jesuit life of my time that were not admirable. I recall the master of novices saying to us eager aspirants that as Jesuits we had no rights after vows, that is, one gave up all his rights upon the taking of vows. Even in 1947 I was shocked to hear such a declaration. He was serious, of course, and I presume that he was wrong, although according to canon law I am not certain. The morbid emphasis on mortification and penance, especially in the early years, I have already touched upon. On this point, when John Diefenbaker visited us in Toronto, he is supposed to have said to the rector at lunch, “Well, you folks don’t go in for those old medieval penitential practices, do you?” I can’t imagine how our stern rector answered him. There was little instruction on the sixth commandment, or sex education. Perhaps the cue was taken from Ignatius himself who stated in his constitutions that chastity needs no explanation except that the purity of the angels should be emulated. This was a figure of speech, of course, but a misleading and confusing one.

The Greater Glory

227

I ran into only a few sexual deviants in my thirty-seven years in the Order, three to be exact, out of the 600 to 700 Jesuits I knew or met. There were probably others – I knew that some had a fixation on sex and used it in their counselling and in their retreats, especially with adolescent boys and girls. It was twisted and disgusting, and some got away with it without being muted and punished. When I brought up my experience as a child with the Jesuit pastor to my spiritual director after being in the Order for ten years, he claimed, as I mentioned earlier, that he had rarely heard of any sexual deviation in his sixty years as a Jesuit, and he had been provincial, or head, of the Order in Canada. He was either indulging in mental reservation or perhaps by that time he had conveniently lost his memory. Also when I painfully brought up the matter of my own abuse to another Jesuit counsellor and asked whether the bishop in whose diocese this priest had been sent after his dismissal from the Canadian Jesuits had been alerted as to why the pastor had been dismissed, he replied that he didn’t think so as the man still had his reputation to be upheld. This is the sort of knavery, as we have recently and sadly learned, that prevailed in the 1950s, and indeed much later as well as earlier. Over the years the Jesuits have been accused of being snobbish, arrogant, taking on airs, possibly because of their long and rigorous training but mainly because of their extraordinary achievements through the centuries. I encountered very little snobbery among the Canadians, partly, perhaps, because modesty is a winning Canadian trait but also because, except for a few geniuses and some extraordinary achievements, we did not have much to boast about. Ignatius abhorred any inflation, either of self or of the Order, and he himself was a modest, humble man. However, I ran into quite a number of Jesuits from other provinces who displayed an excessive conceit in being a Jesuit and what they were achieving and also, presumably, were about to achieve. I remember only two instances of social self-importance among the Canadians. On one occasion a fellow Canadian asked me whether my joining the Jesuits meant a step up in the social scale, the implication being that anyone from Winnipeg probably came from somewhere lower down the scale. Again, an older Jesuit of American-Italian origin

228

The Greater Glory

once confided to me that he had had difficulty in being accepted as a candidate into the Canadian Province until the provincial learned that his ancestors came not from the South of Italy but from the North. Was there overall a kind of brainwashing that took place in the Jesuit Order, such as exists among the Moonies and Christian Fundamentalist groups such as the Opus Dei or Il Focolare? No, not in the same sense, but these groups have inherited some of the less admirable characteristics of Christian religious orders and seem to have filled some of the gaps that the steeply declining numbers of the old orders have produced. Innumerable and daily glorifications of their goals and founders, literal interpretation of the sacred scriptures, complete separation from family, censorship of mail, informing on one another, over-exertion to the point of exhaustion resulting in excessive feelings of guilt and depression, and inordinate emphasis on the good and goal of the group to the complete neglect of the individual are some of their tragic faults. These groups are so much less sophisticated, less knowledgeable, than the traditional religious orders, but they are also more tyrannical and more dangerous, and the Jesuits are to be applauded for opposing them. But to return to the original question, was there some kind of brainwashing in the Jesuit Order? Not in the sense ascribed to those fundamentalist Christian groups, but it is quite true that the long immersion into the Jesuit way of life, rules, constitutions, letters, etc. over an extended period created a particular stamp, an esprit de corps, a commitment, a certain attitude, a singular vision of life and its meaning. It was hard to break away from the Order, as I later discovered, as it had set a certain mould on its members over the years, but this is a far cry from the brainwashing of the Christian fundamentalist groups. The motto of the Jesuits was and is “Ad majorem Dei gloriam” (For the greater glory of God). It is a splendid and glorious insignia, to endeavor to perform all one’s actions not only for the glory of God but for His greater glory, and all Jesuits are called upon to try to attain this lofty goal. How does a Jesuit know on the practical level precisely in what this noble apex of perfection consists?

The Greater Glory

229

First he must pray, he must follow the rules of the Order, he must apply the rules of election if he knows them, and he must consult with superiors if that is feasible. But even with these preliminaries, is there a guarantee that what one chooses to do is, in fact, for God’s greater glory? A particular action may redound to the glory of the Order and perhaps to the individual, but who is to say that it redounds to the greater glory of God? The Jesuits have had a multitude of enemies in their lifetime, some honest persons, many dishonest scoundrels, all of whom opposed vehemently most of what the Jesuits planned or accomplished. Not one of them ever considered what the Jesuits did to be for the greater glory of God. In fact, they condemned as harmful and iniquitous most of the Jesuits’ activities. Even Pope Clement XIV, who suppressed the Jesuits in 1773, was persuaded that the suppression of the Order was for the greater good of the Church, and so of God. A scheme or action embarked upon by a Jesuit may be undertaken following all the guidelines with the best intentions and perceived by him as advancing God’s greater glory, but it may well not be so perceived by most others. Thus, whether any one action does in fact reflect the greater glory of God is questionable. But perhaps after all it doesn’t really matter in the final resort as long as the individual Jesuit honestly thinks it so. To perform actions for the greater glory of God is a noble ideal when intended with sincerity and prudence, a lofty goal that one could constantly strive to attain, but this side of eternity it is still a goal and an aspiration that must always remain in the realm of the subjective.

14 “Pastures New”

during the winter of 1983, a heavy depression began to settle over me without my knowing the root cause of this distress. I began to feel steadily worse until towards the end of term I could hardly concentrate on my lectures and perform my other responsibilities. Even after lectures were over and my examinations turned in, I was unable to read or study, and finally almost unable to speak. I knew that I had to act, to do something that would alleviate the distress. Remi Limoges, my close friend in Toronto, suggested taking the following year off and going to a rehabilitation centre somewhere away from Montreal. Several possibilities were suggested, including one in California that I considered seriously. After discussing my state of health and the various options with the superior of my community at Loyola, I decided to apply to Southdown, a rehabilitation centre north of Toronto. Southdown was an institution set up to help mainly Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers who were emotionally burnt out for one reason or another. It was originally established as a rehabilitation centre for alcoholics and was based on the aa methods, but over the years it had expanded its goals to focus more broadly on the emotional problems of its clients. Southdown was sponsored and supported by many Catholic bishops and religious orders both in Canada and the U.S., but it reached out to non-Catholic clergymen as well. The residents I encountered there were a varied group of priests, nuns, brothers, and non-Catholic clergymen from across

“Pastures New”

231

Canada, from a dozen American states, and a few from overseas, over thirty in all. In a way I felt at home because I realized that since I could barely utter more than a simple sentence in conversation, like the others I needed help and I was anxious to get started and throw myself into whatever activities the program called for. I knew that I had emotional problems. I was raised in a strict but loving Catholic household where children were mainly to be seen and not heard. We children had been taught to behave, to smile, never to whine, to eat what was put before us without complaint, and above all never to talk back or even oppose what was suggested. Most frightening of all was our mother’s disapproving glare and sharp tongue. It was imperative to keep in her good graces, and of course if not, then an enormous feeling of guilt ensued, though the general atmosphere of love and affection superseded these negatives. Then there was the experience with the pedophile Jesuit pastor. I knew that I had to bring the whole matter out in the open and thrash it out thoroughly and professionally. Added to this was the prolonged period of scruples, that agonizing period during my high school years. When I entered the Order I carried all this with me as I tried to please everyone around me, especially those in charge, and of course I also tried to please God and to do what I imagined He wanted from and of me. For thirty-five years in the Order I had kept my emotions bottled up, hardly knowing what they were. The result was a cumulative buildup of suppressed emotions, as I never showed anger, fear, resentment or, given the added restraint and warning of celibacy, even affection. The purpose of Southdown, it seemed to me, was to uncover, identify, and redirect these emotions into normal and sensible channels. In the year before when I was attempting to do research at Oxford, I knew that it was not normal for me to feel depressed while crossing the glorious vista of Christ Church Meadow. At Southdown I was asked not to reveal the names or problems of my fellow residents after I “graduated.” Consequently, I shall mention only a few events that concerned me during my six-month stay there. In general the staff worked hard and did their best.

232

The Greater Glory

Most had degrees either in psychology or diplomas in therapy and were dedicated to relieving the pain and distress of the residents. Nearly all of the activities were carried out in group therapy, where everyone tried to talk about his or her problems, and then, importantly, to listen with care and compassion to the problems of the others in the small gathering. In one group to which I was assigned early in my stay, it came my turn to say how I felt. I blurted out that I felt like a steam engine ready to blow off steam and then dash down the track. “All right then,” said the director, “get down on your knees and imitate the sound and motion of a steam engine.” I hesitated, then went through the embarrassing action. Whether it was helpful or not I cannot tell. Still, I had broken the ice and from then on I threw myself into whatever was asked of me, silly or useless as it might seem. At the end of every month the director called each of us in to discuss our progress. After two months I was told that he and the rest of the staff were very pleased with mine and that a letter stating this would be sent to my superior at Loyola. This assessment encouraged me to dig in once again in the hope of returning home soon to Montreal. Unfortunately, we soon learned that the director would be taking leave for the next three months and that his assistant would be in charge. A week later I was called in by the interim director, presumably, I thought, to enable her to get acquainted with the residents. Instead, I was told that it was reported that I was doing very badly and not co-operating with either the staff or the other residents. I listened in astonishment and dismay. Finally I broke in, something I had never done before and perhaps, ironically, a result of precisely the purpose of my stay there – the releasing of my emotions – and stated in some anger that I found it strange and even inconceivable that in so short a time – one week – I had deteriorated so drastically. I ended up by saying that the charges of the interim director were both untrue and unjust and her actions amateurish and unprofessional. With that she backed off. There were countless episodes that took place in group therapy, some useful, others not. On one occasion in a psycho-drama

“Pastures New”

233

group, I was asked to be the child that I had been at a meal around the dining room table of my family home, complete with my mother, father, and four brothers and sisters. Their parts were taken by the others in the group, and after my giving a short background of the family members and their characteristics, the results were astounding and dramatic, and because of the acuteness of the players, a poignant revelation. In another group we were as usual urged to talk of ourselves and our problems. After summoning courage to reveal some troubling truths about ourselves, we would often be interrupted by the leader who really had little training for this sensitive work. She would suddenly burst in with, “Boring, boring.” Probably it was, but it was devastating to hear at such a moment. I received some visitors during my stay at Southdown, not many, but a few friends made the inconvenient trip to see me for an hour or two. In the minds of many Jesuits there was something almost shameful and self-indulgent about going to Southdown. My friends Remi Limoges and Emmett McKenna paid me several welcome visits. Except for two friends in the community at Loyola, Michael Fahey and Steve Dubas, I received no visits from anyone else, nor did I hear a word of support or encouragement from others at Loyola or Toronto, including the superiors. It was true that I and the other residents there had to work out our own problems, ultimately by ourselves, but it would have helped to get a friendly boost along the way. I was inspired to see Bishop Hayes, archbishop of Halifax, busy as he was and living at a great distance, appear at least once a month to visit one of his priests. At this point, with notable exceptions, the Jesuits did not seem to be the society of love, societas amoris, that Ignatius wanted and insisted upon. To many, showing affection was suspect, and even if it weren’t, after a certain age most were unable to show it. Each of the residents was assigned to a mentor who was supposed to deal individually with his or her psychological and personal needs. I was unlucky in the psychologist first assigned to me, and I was happy to move later to the head director himself. He was a balanced and noble character, but unfortunately he soon went off on a short sabbatical, leaving me with no one for the next

234

The Greater Glory

while. He again took me on when he returned but the pressure of his duties as director forced him to assign me to another. This other was a lucky choice, an American nun who had been the head of an order of sisters in the U.S. She was a wise and discerning woman with much experience in spiritual direction, and I soon came to speak freely with her and trust her judgment. In the course of our twice-weekly meetings, we covered the broad spectrum of my problems, and inevitably and eventually we came to the question of my future and the critical question of my vocation – whether I should go back to Loyola and remain a Jesuit or start thinking of leaving the Order. I knew that I could continue teaching at Concordia even outside the Order as I had a contract and enjoyed tenure. Or I could resign from the university and go to another place or city. The Jesuits had assured me that I had the choice within reason to go anywhere and engage in any ministry to which I felt attracted; this was a generous offer for which I will always be grateful. My nun counsellor told me that in her opinion if I remained in the Order I would probably break down completely in a few years, but that the decision to leave or to stay must be entirely and solely my own. Should I remain a Jesuit or should I leave? It was not easy to leave the Order that I loved and in which I had already spent thirty-six years of my life. A vocation to the priesthood or to the religious life must be completely free, otherwise it has no value and will eventually dissolve. The motives for entering this kind of life can and almost always are mixed, but the predominant motives must be unsullied, and above all the decision must be freely taken. We were all told this from the novitiate onwards, and further that it would not be sinful not to respond to a vocation. But we were also told by our master of novices that once we had taken our vows and consolidated, as it were, our vocation, then leaving a religious order or the priesthood would be ascribed to us as blameworthy and perhaps sinful. As one Jesuit whom I greatly respected said to me, “It is better to play a tin flute in the Order than a Stradivarius outside it.” In other words, one should stay whatever the conditions and whatever happens, the implication being that it would be sinful to go. However, I knew viscerally that this was wrong: if

“Pastures New”

235

you freely chose a career or vocation in the first instance, you should be free to leave it later, without any guilt. While pondering my decision, I said to one fellow Jesuit at Southdown, “Surely you don’t have to remain a Jesuit to get to heaven.” Towards the end of my stay there I made up my mind to postpone my decision and ask for a leave of absence for one year. This had to be done through the provincial of the English Canadian Jesuits and consisted of living on my own, outside a Jesuit house. Permission was granted, provided I kept in contact with the superiors at Loyola during that period. I was keenly aware that there were many other Jesuits at this time in the same situation as I was. Many had already gone away and started a new life, and those left behind were very critical of their actions. “Like rats deserting a sinking ship,” I heard more than once. It was true that the numbers entering the priesthood and traditional religious orders were decreasing drastically, and that the numbers joining the fundamentalist right-wing groups in the Catholic Church were increasing proportionately. For all the faults of the old religious orders, the new groups like Opus Dei, Il Focolare, etc. are a fearsome substitute, despite the approval of the late Pope. I finished my stint at Southdown after six months, feeling not appreciably better, but I was glad to go back to Montreal and hunt for an apartment. The psychiatrist connected with Southdown had prescribed a heavy medication that was supposed to facilitate the jumps between the synapses of the brain. However, it made me feel sluggish, almost zombie-like, and I stopped taking the pills soon afterwards. Fortunately, I found that I could function without them, converse with reasonable facility and formulate and exchange ideas, and so I got ready to teach again in the fall. After Christmas I made my decision. I would not return to living with the Jesuits at Concordia but would apply to Rome for permission to leave the Order. I consulted and prayed hard, and I still came up with the same answer. I did not want to go back, I could not go back: the very thought of it seemed to paralyze me. Indeed, I even hoped to marry some day. Did I feel guilty? Yes. I had nightmares for a long time after, even for years, but I had

236

The Greater Glory

made up my mind, to go, and I kept on attempting to banish these thoughts of guilt from my mind. I knew that my decision would not please many others, both in and out of the Jesuits, yet I was beginning to realize that I didn’t mind whom I pleased or whom I did not please as long as I had satisfied myself and a few others of my friends and family who supported me throughout. A few Jesuits contemporary with me, hearing of my decision, wrote to try to dissuade me. It is curious that I hadn’t seen or heard from any of them for years, nor have I heard a word from them since. In time the documents releasing me from the Order and the priesthood arrived. They were in Latin, of course, and their language and tone were severe and inflexible. I was to be one of the “dimissi,” dismissed, sent away, let go, discharged, with many other meanings, a few benign, most pejorative. I read them through, signed them, and sent them quickly away. Most of the many Jesuits I had met and lived with in my time in the Order were fine men, dedicated and hard-working. The best ones came from loving and balanced families. In these there was no guile, no second-agenda; they possessed the highest ideals, which they tried unobtrusively to put into practice, and above all they displayed a fine charity and respect towards everyone. I forged close bonds of friendship with a few, and those bonds I still cherish. There were many others with immense talents that somehow or other they were unable to harness; consequently they performed little serious work in all their days after the long training was over. Those in charge, the superiors, being mainly of Irish descent, tended to interpret every rule and letter from Rome in its strict literal sense, unlike the Europeans. They did their best but generally they seemed inadequate either in ability or temperament to carry out their awesome responsibilities, especially in dealing with the souls of the Jesuits assigned to them. Yet over all, they acted with kindness and generosity to me and to those whom I knew. Ignatius, as I have said, was passionate about helping his fellow man in and out of the Society, especially the sick and the poor, all to be done with an exquisite charity. That to me was his finest trait, but he and many of his followers also displayed an excessive

“Pastures New”

237

concern for the honour, dignity, and reputation of the Jesuit Order At times the group appeared to count for more than the individual: the unity and reputation of the Order were paramount, and with that attitude some individual members were lost in the process. In dealing with others, especially the sick, the ideal was to see Christ in them, but even this extraordinary ideal at times obscured the personality of the person being administered to. Though declining in numbers, the Jesuits today are vigorous and efficient in a multitude of ministries throughout the world. The Order is not an out-worn institution; it is just that many of its structures, methods, and procedures that I experienced were out-worn. I still felt myself going steadily downhill. I could see myself being able to function only minimally if I remained in the Order; what I could do outside it I did not know, but even at fifty-seven the prospects seemed brighter. I do not blame the Order or anyone in it for what transpired when I was a member. I alone made my decision to leave and I believe that during those thirty-seven years I did what I could to uphold the ideals of the Order. But I could go no further. I am grateful to the Jesuits and the Jesuit Order for what they did do for me, and not resentful for what they didn’t. And so began a completely new life. The highlight of this new life was my relationship with Emilia, whom I was later to marry. I had first met her at a party given by Paolo Vivante, classics professor at McGill, and his wife, Vera. Then again at a dinner party given by Eileen Preston, a fellow classicist at Concordia, to whom I am very grateful for introducing me to Emilia. Shortly afterwards I left Montreal and we entered into a year-long correspondence, occasionally by phone but mainly by letter, that soon evolved into a courtship. Amazingly, we realized that we had grown as close as if we had been seeing each other every day. A year later we were married. Emilia was born in Bologna, Italy, and had come to Canada with her parents as a child. She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Montreal, then studied English literature at Loyola College where she graduated with honours. At McGill she took a Master’s degree in library science, and worked for some years in the McGill Library where her tri-lingual skills were put to good

238

The Greater Glory

use. Emilia and I share many interests, especially music and books. Her two children, Olivia and Hadrian, were young teenagers when I first knew them, and I soon came to love them as my own children. They are now married, Olivia with two boys, Hadrian with three boys and one girl, all a delight both to their grandmother and their adopted grandfather. The transition period after those many years with the Jesuits has required many adjustments on my part, but it has been exceptionally happy. Our marriage has deepened over the years and been enriched by the children and the grandchildren. I am very grateful for these years of happiness and, looking back, I have no regrets over that life-altering decision taken over twenty years ago.

Acknowledgments

i am grateful to many for their assistance: Geoffrey Adams, Charles Kannengiesser, Jeffrey Racette, Wyndham Strover, Annette Teffeteller, Michael Turner, and especially Michael Fahey and Sean McEvenue for reading my manuscript and offering valuable suggestions. Also, I would like to thank the editors of McGillQueen’s University Press for their friendly support from the outset: Dr. D.H. Akenson for his kindly encouragement; Kyla Madden for her careful guidance and sound judgment; Filomena Falocco for her clear and precise cataloguing instructions; Joan McGilvray for her sharp eye in reviewing the text and unifying the punctuation; and especially Joan Harcourt for her discernment, patience, and geniality in the comprehensive and clarifying editing of the manuscript. I thank all those others who helped bring this memoir to press, not least the two assessors for their helpful insights and suggestions. Finally, I thank most dearly my wife, Emilia, for her constant presence and unwavering love. For any errors in facts, details, and, above all, judgment in the writing of this memoir, I take full responsibility.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Abbott, Roger, 185 Amadis, Père, 56 Amann, Père, 57

Frederick, Père, 57 friends: Jesuit, 135–7, 215–16, 233, 236. See particular friendships

Braceland, Larry, 108 brothers ( Jesuit), 91–2, 141

George, Fr Gordon, 169–70 Gisenger, Adam, 52 golf, 18–19, 209 Goodier, Archbishop, 83 Gordon, George, 169–70 Grades, 88–9 Greater Glory of God, 228–9

Casey, Fr Ken, 185–6 classical studies: juniorate, 107–10; McGill, 186, 195–6 Copleston, Fr Fred, 211 Crowe, Fr Fred, 157 D’Arcy, Fr Martin, 208–9 Deslaurier, Fr Anthony, 39–40 Diefenbaker, John, 166–7 Dubas, Fr Steve, 233 Dunn, Fr, 90 Emilia and children, 237–8 examination of conscience, 77–8 Fahey, Fr Michael, 216, 233 family: father, 7–9, 152–3; house, 3; members, 3–4, 153; mother, 4–7, 10–11, 137; religious practice, 13–15 Ferguson, Don, 185

Heaney, Tom, 109 Hévey, Br, 91–2 Hodgins, Fr John, 187–8, 192–4 Holland, Fr John, 45–6 Ignatius, 90, 99, 101, 103–4, 106, 170, 177–8, 220–1, 226 illness, 90, 166, 212, 223–4, 230–1 Index of Forbidden Books, 54 indifference, 175–6 Jansen, Cornelis, 126–7 Jansenism, 126–7, 220–1 Jesuits: constitutions, 178–9; critique of training, 181–2, 224–9, 236–7; deciding to

242

Index

become, 63–6; drama and public speaking, 44, 82; English, 208–9, 210–11; founding, 72; French, 207–8; high school teachers, 39; leaving, 100–1, 234–7; method of teaching, 40–1, 43, 146; mobility, 138; motives for entering, 69, 218; poverty, 127–8, 141, 199–200; sports programs, 41–3. See also Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, Grades, vows Lactantius, viii, 186, 196, 200, 212 Lahey, Fr Gerald, 52, 54, 64 Lally, Fr 98–9 Latin: debates in, 113; juniorate, 108–9; lectures in, 156; novitiate, 76; requirement, 68–9, 84- 5; teaching, 183–4 libraries: restricted access to, 112, 123, 157–8 Lievens, Fr Constantine, 144 Limoges, Fr Remi, 215, 230 Lonergan, Fr Bernard, 124, 218–9 long and short course, 132, 155–6 Loyola High School, 183; community, 214–17; curriculum, 184–5, 187; discipline, 185–6; sports, 185, 194 Loyola College, 69, 82–3, 138, 183, 196–9 Malone, Fr Thomas, 52 manifestation of conscience, 113–14, 139, 221 manual labour, 73–5 McDonough, Fr Gerry, 220 McEvenue, Sean, 166, 219 McGill University, 186, 195–6

McGuigan, Cardinal, 169 McKenna, Fr Emmett, 233 McKenty, Neil, 135 McKinnney, Bob, 15–16 McLean, Alan, 185 meals, 72–3, 78–80 meditation: in novitiate, 71, 84, 95; in seminary, 119; in tertianship, 176 memory, 70–1, 83, 111–12 ministries, 169, 187, 199, 224 mission to India, 144–5, 220 modernism, 154 mortification, 77, 95–7, 176–8, 222–3 Nash, Fr Peter, 129 Nelligan, Fr Francis, 52 Newman Club, 55–6, 62–3 novitiate: brothers, 91–2; cassock, 70; chapter of faults, 104; duration, 69; Grades, 88–9; humility, 101; leaving, 101; location, 67; Long Retreat, 92–5; meals, 72–3, 78–80, 84; meditation, 71, 84; members, 68, 82–3; modesty of the eyes, 99; motives for joining, 69; mortification, 95–7; off ordo, 105; particular friendships, 81; recreation, 80, 84–5, 86–7; revelation of faults, 85–6; Sacred Silence, 86; spiritual reading, 75, 83, trials, 97–100; vows, 105–6 nuns: Christmas Eve Mass, 29–30; confession, 31–2; teaching, 28 obedience, letter on, 103–4 O’Connor, Fr Eric, 219

Index O’Keefe, Fr Cyril, 186, 195, 209–10, 215–16 ordination, 167–9 O’Sullivan, Joe, 58, 62 particular friendships, 81, 102–3, 114–15, 215 Pearson, Jim, 184 pedophile priest, 34–6 Peterkin, Fr Alan, 215 philosophy: courses, 121–2, 128–9, 139–40; exams, 131–2, 142–3; thesis form, 122–3 Plunkett, Fr Patrick, 110 Potvin, Doug, 184 public penances, 101–2 reading at table, 78–9, 120–1 recreation: Loyola, 214–5; novitiate, 80, 84–5, 86–7; seminary, 124–6 Regiopolis College, 132–7, 145–6, 150–1; shooting, 148–9 Reischman, Br 91 Roach, Br, 92 Rooster Town, 33 Rowell, Br, 92 Rule 32, 102–3 Ryan, Fr Cecil, 217 Sacred Study, 111 St Paul’s College: high school, 38– 9, 150–1; university, 52–4, 62, 132 scruples, 47–50 Shames, Morris, 212 Sheridan, Fr Edward, 161–3, 211 Smith, Fr Eric, 52 Sodality of Mary, 56, 187 Southdown, 230–4 spiritual direction and lack of, 77, 93, 96, 103, 106, 165–6, 169–70, 173–5, 177–8, 221–3, 236

243

Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius: Kingdom and Two Standards, 94; mortification, 95–6, 164–6; novitiate, 92–5; St Paul’s College, 55–7 sports, 86, 110–11, 142 Starowicz, Mark, 185 Swain, Fr John, 65 Tait, Fr Gerald, 216, 218 teaching, 132–4, 145, 151–2, 183, 196–9 tertianship, 173: ministries, 179– 80; spiritual exercises, 175–8 theology: ad Grad exam, 171–2; courses, 154–5, 157–63 Third Degree of Humility, 176–8, 222–3 Tones class, 140–1 Toronto Seminary, 117–25 trips: Loyola, 187–94; classical, 199–209 Turner, Michael, 185 University Naval Training Division, 59–61 University of Manitoba, 51–4 vacations: Banff, 21–5; California, 20–1; Guelph, 86–7; Lake Joseph, 116–17; Lake Winnipeg, 25–7, 66; Laurentians, 138 visitor, 119 vows, 88–9, 105–6, 186–7 Whyte, Jack, 46 Winnipeg General Strike, 61–2 Winnipeg Youth Council, 61–3