It has long been a mystery to me why the Catholic Church has done so little to provide spiritual guidance to its members in the later stages of life. When you consider how many of these members, both here in the United States and around the world, are over sixty, you become convinced that the church has bypassed rich opportunities for pastoral care of the aged and of those who feel concern about them.

Friends and colleagues active in other churches and religious groups assure me that this neglect of opportunity is not confined to my church. These groups also tend to ignore the special needs and rich possibilities available to them in their own older members.

I remember one Protestant minister, a scholar interested in aging and spirituality, confirming this fact. He went on to share with me his opinion that the chief reason for this neglect is because the clergy are in denial about their own aging.

Just recently the silence about elder ministry on the part of Catholic officials has been broken dramatically. At least on the highest levels, strong evidence has suddenly appeared showing that the church recognizes the spiritual needs and the potential of its older members and wants to respond.

Three documents have been published that reveal a new level of awareness on the part of church leaders about the resources represented in its elders and their claim both to minister and to be ministered to.  The first two of these writings come from Rome and are addressed to Catholics throughout the world; the third was sent by the American bishops at the recent conclusion of their semi-annual meeting.

The first document, called “The Dignity of Older People and their Mission in the Church and in the World,”  was issued by the Vatican’s Council for the Laity in October, 1998. Positive in outlook and including much enlightened gerontology, the text offers fine material under such headings as “The meaning and value of old age.”

The second piece, also from Rome, is a “Letter to the Elderly” written by Pope John Paul II. Issued in October 1999, this long letter comes from the 79-year-old spiritual leader who wants to share with others his experiences of growing old.

This document is filled with hope, as John Paul’s writes in a personal way about God’s work in his own life and in the world. Among other  remarks about his own experience, he says: “Despite the limitations brought on by age, I continue to enjoy life.”

Looking toward the new millennium, he finds many signs of hope. Among them, he cites the new consensus about universal human rights, recognition of the dignity of women, and the ongoing dialogue among world religions.

For an appraisal of this letter I interviewed Monsignor Charles Fahey, director of Fordham University’s Third Age Center and the leading priest-gerontologist in this country. Not always an enthusiast for church documents, Monsignor Fahey calls this letter “the best statement on the spirituality of aging” that he has seen. He hopes that people from other religious traditions will draw spiritual profit from it also.

The third document appeared only two weeks ago. It was issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and entitled “Blessings of Age: A Pastoral Message on Growing Older with the Faith Community.” Monsignor Fahey served as a consultant to the American bishops for this statement and brought his wide knowledge and experience to the project.

At the beginning the bishops state three reasons for writing: 1) to affirm and challenge older people; 2) to present a new view of older people that sees them as active participants in the church’s life and mission; 3) to help develop structures in parishes that will encourage and make easier the contributions of elders.

Another feature of the bishops’ letter is their directing words to groups of people who may not themselves be elderly but who have some stake in their well-being. Thus they offer advice to caregivers, to pastors and pastoral staff members, and to younger adults.

In the past I have often found church documents less than stimulating, to say the least. But these recent writings strike me as different. They show a positive,  hopeful outlook and they demonstrate remarkable confidence in the people to whom they are addressed.

The kind of spiritual gerontology they offer meets a need that I have found widespread. In this age of both soul-searching and great uncertainty, they offer much that for both reflection and prayer.  My hope is that many others will find in them some of the inspiration that has come to me.

Incidentally, the best way to find the first two documents is through the Internet at the Vatican web site. Its address is www.vatican.va. The Pope’s letter is not yet available in printed form but “The Dignity of Older People” can be purchased for a nominal price at 1 (800) 876-4463.

The American bishops statement can be found at www.nccbusee.org/laity.blessings.htm. [link no longer active] You can also get it in printed form by calling 800 235-8722.

Richard Griffin

It has become fashionable to badmouth public television, of late. Just about everyone I know resents the incessant fundraising and aggressive tactics used to get more money. At least one friend has announced that she has stopped giving to our Boston channel altogether.

Such critics ignore, however, the marvelous programs that continue to appear. Two of them related to aging caught my attention recently. They each delivered images that, in the days after their showing,  have continued to nourish my soul.

The first was a Masterpiece Theater drama “Lost For Words” written by Derec Longden and based on his own experience. It stars two fine British actors, Dame Thora Hird and Pete Postlewaite who play an aged woman in serious decline and her adult son.

When we first meet the mother in flashback, her life is still active. In fact, she then enjoys greater freedom than earlier when her oppressive husband was alive. “I’ve been very happy since he died,” she confesses. “It took me a long time to be able to say that.”

At this stage, she feels lighthearted enough to reply impishly to a question put to her by her son. “Mum, do you want to be buried or cremated? he asks. “I don’t know,” she responds, “surprise me.”

Later, hit with two strokes, the mother eventually has to leave her home and be placed in a residence for the elderly.

The sign of her mental deterioration comes when she imagines seeing “little devils” around her house. To block their entrance, she stops up the faucets and other outlets. “I’m daft, aren’t I?” she asks her son who comforts her with great patience and sensitivity.

Soon she starts calling her son by his father’s name, “Jesse” instead of “Deric.” Her face displays the confusion and terror felt by people who go through this bewildering experience; his face is full of compassion and support.

I asked my friend and next door neighbor George Hein why he so strongly recommended my viewing this drama. “It was so sensitively done,” he replied. “It was spectacularly unromantic. It did not pretend that dealing with your parents in old age is either easy or satisfying. For those who have been through it, or are going to go through it, it’s very revealing.”

My friend George also admired the way the son stuck with it, never complaining because he had to drive eighty miles to where his mother lived.  The son’s wife, with whom he shares a deeply affectionate marriage, is blind. Though she cannot do much to help her mother-in-law, she shows herself always supportive of Deric’s efforts.

Prejudice against the old and weak emerges when Deric takes his mother to a nursery where one of the attendants tells him: “You ought to keep her on a bloody lead.” This comes as a shocking contrast with the way he treats his mother consistently.

Near the end of the drama, Deric finds the right residence for his mother. We see one of the aides there admiring a photo of the old woman as she looked when young. Then the television camera focuses on Deric’s hand enfolding his mother’s, a sign of his persevering love for her.

The second episode that moved me was an interview with the great French mime Marcel Marceau, shown on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. This famous performer was born Marcel Mangel in 1923 to a Jewish family in Strasbourg. His father was deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and never seen again.

We see him in the role of Bif, the comic character he created in 1947. In another role viewers see him struggling to take off the laughing mask in an episode that reveals “the solitude of man.”

The first shock that comes with the interview is to hear Marceau talk at all. He speaks fluent English though he accompanies his speech with constant use of his dramatic hands and marvelous facial expressions. What a lithe body he has at age 76, with his frizzy hair, supple limbs, and eyes full of light!

“Is your art metaphysical?” asks interviewer Elizabeth Farnsworth. “Absolutely,” he relies, “I like to reveal the essence of our soul, the inside of ourselves.”  He believes in “the stream of silence” and tries to bring complete silence to theaters where he performs.

He does not like to call himself religious but “when I do the creation of the world, God is in me.”  What difference has age made to his art, Farnsworth perceptively inquires. “Age has helped me to go deeper. I think that with age I cover more of the experience of my life.”

Asked finally about his legacy, this dynamic artist focuses on the language of gesture. “What is important is understanding why the gesture is there: not one word, not one gesture too much.” He feels gratified that mime has now been accepted as an universal language now and that it has become part of American culture.

Richard Griffin

The finest one-actor stage performance I have ever seen took place in 1975. That’s when a friend and I went to see “Brief Lives” at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. The playbill is here in my hands as I write, souvenir of a play that still reverberates in me, twenty-five years later.

The superb British actor Roy Dotrice took the part of the seventeenth century London diarist, John Aubrey. In a marvelous impersonation of that eccentric writer, Dotrice entered into the character of the man and convinced us onlookers that we were witnessing Aubrey himself in his one-room lodging.

“As the first morning light filters through the heavy curtains of John Aubrey’s chamber – which serves him as bedroom, library, kitchen and study – it slowly reveals a dusty, untidy,  and overcrowded room, more like a museum than a private lodging.”  This is the way the director, Patrick Garland, described the set.

The set was so intricately designed that it amounted to another part in the play. The room was incredibly crowded with books, papers, food, furnishings, and tools. One had to wonder how Aubrey, depicted as seventy years old, could ever find anything at all.

In trying to deal with my own stuff, I sometimes feel like John Aubrey. Recently, for instance, it took me weeks to find a bill that I had promised a company as a receipt. But repeated efforts to find the piece of paper had turned up nothing. I was beginning to despair of ever finding  it.

Then one day, looking through a manila folder marked “House: Current,” I suddenly came across the elusive document. As the ancient Greeks would have said: Eureka!  (“I have found it.”) A wave of elation wept over me as I  finally held in hand the elusive piece that had defied weeks of searching.

What gave a final twist to the event was my discovering the document just where it should have been. The whole time it was lurking in the appropriate folder waiting for easy retrieval. How ironic to have failed to look in the very place where good order required the darned thing to be!

From events like this,  most of us will be tempted to draw at least one rash conclusion: only older people lose things and take a long time to find them. It’s just like us elders to spend our time looking for whatever we cannot find.

But did we not all lose things when we were young? I still feel chagrin that the baseball I once owned as an adolescent, given me by my father and adorned with the signatures of  the Red Sox of that era – – Ted Williams, Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, et al. – – got lost.

We also forget that, by the time of later life, we are likely to have collected an awful lot of stuff. My files are much more numerous and filled with much more material than when I was younger. Also the number of books in my house keeps growing especially since a long-ingrained taboo  forbids me from throwing any of them away.

Many of the countless events and encounters we elders have experienced have left a trail. In my instance, at least, that trail consists mostly of paper. But long after the event there are also many other things – – wedding presents, photographs galore, and knick- knacks picked up on various trips.

And this law of accumulation applies, not merely to external things, but mental realities as well. If we have trouble remembering where we put something, part of it may be that our minds are so lavishly furnished now. The memory of where I put that document competes with thousands of other memories.

Reluctantly, however, I must admit the influence of another reality as well. In later life our short-term memory tends not to be so sharp as when we were young. Dredging up from the murky depths a particular bit of information often takes longer. When trying to recall where I had put that receipt  put my short-term memory to a test it failed to pass.

However, inability to lay my hand on something promptly does not mean that I am “losing it.” Saying so would be jumping to a conclusion without looking at other much more likely explanations.

As admitted above, too much stuff clutters my home office. And I am not as well organized as I need to be. Ideally, I ought to be spending some time each day sorting out what needs to be saved and throwing out everything else. And the material judged worth saving ought to be put into neatly marked files where it can be retrieved in a relatively short time.

One of these days, be warned, I’m going to become super well organized. The ghost of John Aubrey is going to be exorcised from my life. In the meantime, however, please don’t ask me for anything, at least anything you need to receive from me in less than a few weeks.

Richard Griffin

“Gerard was incapable of ‘cutting’ someone he knew, had in this instance known so long; as one grows older the fact of having known someone ‘all one’s life’ becomes more important.”

This is what the late British writer Iris Murdoch says of a leading character in her fascinating novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, a recent selection of my reading group, well-received by all our members. I was struck by the writer’s observation because it accords so well with my own experience and, I suspect, the experience of many other people who have reached a certain age.

Actually, the phrase “becomes more important” strikes me as something of an understatement. For me, friends of long standing have become a vital source marking both continuity and discontinuity in my life.

The two Bobs, Frank, and Jack and I have been close friends since the first year of high school. Though the vicissitudes of life have carried us in different directions, the bonds among us have never snapped. Knowing one another for fifty years has been the source of much value and continues to feed our souls.

That we are all  men, that I do not count among friends of such long standing any women, derives from the exclusively male environment in which I received schooling as an adolescent. More than half a century after its founding, our school still has not admitted girls.

I could discourse here on the virtues of each friend but that might embarrass them. It will suffice to say that each of them has special qualities of personality that have worn well through so many years.

Despite living in the same region, some of us do not see one another very often. But we turn out for major occasions: weddings, parental funerals, retirement celebrations, and other special events. With Jack, I celebrate Christmas Eve and his birthday every year; with one of the Bobs, I have dinner most weeks.

But, even when we do not see each other, we still hold one another close. We share so many formative experiences over which we reminisce and often laugh. Our salad days seem far removed now but some of us are enjoying dessert. Two of us are very late marriers and still have young children to fascinate us. Two others have grandchildren by now whose arrivals give them hope for their family future.

One of the Bobs, by reason of his vocation as priest, lives a celibate life of service to the people of his parish and the church at large. The rest of us look to him for spiritual inspiration, liturgical celebration at joyful times, and support during crises.

Like everybody else, we as a group have had to bear such times. Various bodily ailments continue to test the courage of these friends. The worst affliction has come to the spouse of one of us, a disease mysterious in its origins and devastating in its effects. We friends suffer with this woman whom we have known for decades as we wish her husband strength and wisdom.

I go beyond the Iris Murdoch character Gerald because, not only would I not reject an old friend but I would not criticize him either. The longevity of friendship counts enough with me that a personal statute of limitations has taken effect. Respect and affection for these friends demands that by this point in time I affirm them and cannot feel justified in ever badmouthing  them.

We came from a society much more stable than American society is now. Though no one of us conformed completely to type, we were products of the Greater Boston, Irish-Catholic community. The church loomed very large in our personal development; so did family. Though some of us joined in the rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s, we have never renounced charter membership in the solidly middle class echelon of America.

We all speak the same cultural language, a fact that has made communication among us easy. So far as I know, members of this informal group have never had a personal falling-out or an ongoing dispute. The five of us differ, no doubt, about many subjects but not enough to cause estrangement.

I asked each of my four friends to tell me their feelings about the sweep of personal history that has been ours. The most touching came from Frank who told me: “One of the things that we have been able to do is know one another well enough to wish it would go on forever.”

One of the Bobs calls long friendships “a great consolation to me that there is a significant number of people that I have known all my life; I find it absolutely unique in a  mobile society, that there are people whom  you don’t have to introduce herself  to. With them, you don’t have to start up again.”

Richard Griffin