What pleasure is sweeter in later life than seeing a friend from boyhood receive a public honor? In addition to rejoicing with him, you taste the exquisite satisfaction of being ahead of anyone else in having recognized your friend’s merits long before they did.

That was my experience last week as Robert Bullock, who has been my friend since age fourteen, received recognition from the Brookline-based national organization Facing History and Ourselves. Father Bullock is pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Sharon where he is much respected and loved by parishioners and townspeople.

Jokingly, I tell Bob that he became well prepared for the challenges of an adventurous life when we were in high school together. We were both members of the St. Sebastian’s baseball team during those years. Anyone who was brave enough to play third base, as he did, when I was pitching, certainly demonstrated bravery under fire.

In those days I did not realize that Bob had already been touched by history seven years previously. In 1936, Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, visited Bob’s home parish in Newton. There he placed his hand on the boy’s head in blessing. Little did anyone know then that this pope would become the continuing subject of controversy even now, centered on his actions and failures to act during World War II.

Incidentally, I feel some small association with this same drama. As a reporter for the Boston Post, my father was sent to cover the papal consistory of 1939 at which Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope. He accompanied Cardinal O’Connell, the archbishop of Boston, on shipboard as the latter sailed to Rome to vote. No one at that time doubted that Pacelli was the right person as the world and the church entered a time of severe crisis.

In retrospect, there seems to have been something prophetic in Bob’s contact with Cardinal Pacelli, however fleeting. It can now be seen to presage his lifelong interest in the relationship of the Catholic Church with the Jewish community, an interest that would lead to his involvement in Facing History.

Before becoming pastor in Sharon, Father Bullock had been Catholic chaplain at Brandeis University. That was a position highly favorable for developing an intimate knowledge of Jewish traditions in all their beauty and variety. He became a student of the Jewish community and moved ahead of his own church in his appreciation of that faith so closely linked with his own.

Through his study and personal associations over the years, my friend Bob has built on the Brandeis experience and has become widely recognized for his pioneer work in helping bring the Jewish and Catholic communities closer together.

He has followed with intense concern the issues raised by the Holocaust. His commitment to the educational mission of Facing History has been notable: the struggle to eliminate racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism. With this organization, he believes that “history is a moral enterprise” and must be studied for its meaning.

Father Bullock has long anticipated the Catholic Church’s official moves toward revision of its own theology vis-à-vis the Jewish community. He took the lead in applying the teachings of the Second Vatican Council that corrected erroneous ideas about responsibility for the death of Jesus. And he saw how Catholics need to change deeply ingrained attitudes about brothers and sisters whose faith antedates Christianity.

Another important set of experiences in Father Bullock ministry comes from his role as director of campus ministry for the Archdiocese of Boston. He held this position at time of great tension in American society, nowhere more so than in colleges and universities.

The Church, too, was feeling this same pressure as demands for change became insistent. My friend helped steer many of us campus ministers through this time of radicalism in church, academia, and society at large.

His work with Facing History has been deeply relevant to the ministry that Bob Bullock has practiced for decades. Two weeks ago, Facing History not only gave my friend words of praise before an audience of twelve hundred people, but also endowed a educational fellowship in his name. The organization had good reason to do so: Father Bullock has been contributing his talents to it for much of its twenty-five year history.  The executive director of the agency, Margot Stern Strom, expressed special appreciation for giving to its members the benefits of his theological reflection and wise counsel.

At the same time that Father Bullock was honored, the philanthropist Richard Smith, for whom his Jewish tradition is vitally important, was also recognized for long service to Facing History. Currently chairman of the board of trustees, Smith has distinguished himself for his generosity to the organization and his good ideas for extending its services more widely.

As a guest at the award ceremony, I felt privileged to be taking part in an event that celebrated the spirit of both Passover and Easter in the exchange of mutual respect and love.

Richard Griffin