Father Bullock As Spiritual Leader

On his deathbed, Father Robert Bullock made a singular request. He knew that his friend Padraic had quarreled with someone and he wanted to know whether the two had reconciled. “We have to fix it,” he said of that relationship.

Bob Bullock himself was at odds with no one. He died peacefully last June, mourned by members of his parish in Sharon, Massachusetts, by many other residents of that town, and by loads of others people.

In tribute to him and his legacy, Temple Israel in Sharon hosted a celebration last week, attended by some 450 people. Jewish leaders took the lead, recognizing all that Father Bullock had done to promote spiritual understanding and genuine friendship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community. In a program of spoken reflections, video presentations, and musical offerings, the temple lauded him for all that he was.

Father Bullock felt flattered by those who called him “Rabbi,” said television reporter David Boeri. “He could see himself as a descendant of Abraham,” Boeri added, as he told of his pastor’s spiritual stature.

A woman parishioner said of him: “He saw God working through ordinary people.” Another described her pastor as “a moral compass, visionary and wise,” as she gave thanks for his role in her life.

Rabbi Clifford Librach who was Bob’s close friend described him as “a lover of the Jewish people.”  His love showed itself in many ways, the rabbi said. Notably, “the negative portrayals of the Jewish people he took quite personally.”

Before beginning his 26 years as pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows church, Father Bullock had served as Catholic chaplain at Brandeis University, where his feeling for the Jewish tradition had grown and deepened. He also played a vital role in the founding and growth of Facing History and Ourselves, the pioneering organization that has promoted an understanding of the Holocaust and other forms of prejudice against Jews and others.

Being pastor was the work that Father Bullock liked best. In a poignant letter he wrote to parishioners when he knew himself to be dying, he said simply: “I love being pastor here. It has always seemed right for me and the conviction that this is part of my vocation has never wavered.”

About his death from cancer, he wrote as only a deeply spiritual person could: “It is not for me a great misfortune but a necessary part of my life to which I feel called. I have always felt fortunate, blessed by the Lord, and I do now.”

I count my own friendship with Bob Bullock as one of my most valued spiritual gifts. That friendship lasted almost 61 years, beginning with our high school days together. Knowing him early in his life gave me an almost unique perspective to admire his human and spiritual development over a long period.

That development is what I consider my friend’s greatest legacy. When an adolescent, he showed only some of the personal qualities that would make him so outstanding a spiritual leader. His brother Myron, who was a year ahead of us in school, was the star student in the Bullock family.

But Myron would later write a letter comparing himself to Bob. In that letter he says of his brother: “He was far greater, far more extensive and far, far more enduring. He was wise with a wisdom that cannot be taught and that only a few develop to its full capacity. He was understanding and could penetrate to the heart, the substance, whether of a book, or situation, or person.”

This tribute attests to Bob’s growth into a leader whose own spirituality was large-hearted and solid. What he did in ministry to others flowed from his inner resources, built up over a long time. That helps to explain why he had such an impact on so many people.

I take the tributes to my friend as consolation for losing him to death. The recognition he has received comes as a blessing to those of us who knew him. He went to his grave accompanied by the grateful prayers of the many who loved him and esteemed him for the spiritual gifts that he was glad to share.

Richard Griffin

Are Women Better Than Men?

Are women better than men?  Do they have spiritual qualities that make them more fully human than men?

Crime statistics would seem to indicate so. You don’t find women convicted of violent felonies in nearly the numbers that men exhibit. And precious few women have ever begun wars or led others in the slaughter of their fellow human beings.

In a recent lecture, a Catholic theologian, Edward Vasek, suggested reasons for favoring women over men. He sees them as being more spiritual and loving than most of mankind. To back up this opinion he cited two unlikely authorities.

One is John Paul II, Bishop of Rome and Pope. The other is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office responsible for Catholic orthodoxy.

The main reason why the pope especially values women is that he sees them as more directly pointed toward “being for the other.” They have a more spontaneous tendency to love and serve other people, a tendency that goes beyond what most men show. “Perhaps more than men,” the pope writes, “women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts.”

John Paul thus envisions women as those who “help to make human relations more honest and authentic.” Because of their special talent for human relations and spiritual values, the pope adds, “society owes much to the genius of women.”

Coming from a man, this kind of praise must, unfortunately, be looked at critically. Often it may contain a hypocrisy or sentimentality that may render it suspect. When it issues from a man who has ruled that ordination to the priesthood is out of bounds for women, it will always lack credibility to some extent, however sound the thinking behind his words.

Though this credibility problem tends to overshadow his teaching, the pope’s statements about women’s spiritual stature find ample support in the real world. Female human beings are generally more contemplative than males. They have a heartfelt orientation toward silence, receptivity, prayer, and interiority that distinguishes their gender.

Cardinal Ratzinger, for his part, sees in Mary, the mother of Jesus, a model of femininity. She possesses qualities that are valuable for both church and society. These qualities include “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise, and waiting.” Continuing, he writes: “While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live them with particular intensity and naturalness.”

The theologian referred to above, Edward Vasek, attributes the spiritual preeminence of women to their being receptive to God. Without discounting the value of men, he sees women as helping to civilize them, to make men more open to non-pragmatic values.

To him, it is important to recognize the difference between the sexes. “Their brains are different; so is their cardio-vascular system,” he says.  At the same time, however, he insists on the basic unity of male and female persons, under God who created us both the same and different.

Father Vasek endorses Cardinal Ratzinger’s hope that women will continue to reject being power hungry and aggressive, as so many men are. The special sensitivity that women have is a gift that is worth cultivating.

American society stands in desperate need of the qualities associated with contemplation. The tendency to be caught up in feverish activity detracts from our capacity to appreciate the fullness of human life. If we do not find time to wonder at the mystery of it all, we are missing something precious.

American life is so noisy and pressured that it makes moments of repose often impossible. But spirituality remains largely off limits to anyone who cannot ever be silent and listen to his or her inner self.

Perhaps the aging of the American population will make a difference. Of the change that happens with many men after retirement, the psychologist David Gutmann writes: “A significant sex-role turnover takes place, in that men begin to live out  .  .  .  the ‘femininity’ that was previously repressed in the service of productivity.”

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” This is the sexist complaint of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. When it comes to spirituality, however, perhaps we can ask the opposite: Why can’t a man be more like a woman?

Richard Griffin

Bob’s Continuing Presence

On a brilliant June morning, I departed from the cemetery along with a crowd of other mourners, leaving my friend Bob’s body behind. His coffin would be buried sometime later in a plot next to his mother’s grave.

Since that time, I have been thinking about Bob, his life and his death. That he died only a few weeks after discovering a fatal disease still shocks me and his many friends. We had thought we had more time with him than that.

Understand that Bob and I were friends for 61 years, ever since we entered high school together. We had stayed in touch all during that time, bound as we were by ties of respect and affection. Also we shared spiritual values that became even more important as we aged.

I feel Bob to be still present to me despite his death, but I continually revolve in my mind and heart how that is true. In this contemplation, I have found help from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis in 1945.

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer wrote the following words to his wife: “Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through.

“That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.”

This passage formed part of a memorial service for another friend, a priest-psychiatrist whose death I also recently mourned. It was read by another physician who also values Bonhoeffer’s words. For me, the words carried a vital message as I thought about Bob.

I find at least two important ideas in this passage from the German theologian’s letters. First, that God does not fill the gap that is left in our hearts when a loved one dies. Asserting that God does so is too facile; that would be God taking away from us something humanly valuable, the empty place in our hearts that nothing can fill.

And, secondly, that God does us a favor in keeping that place empty. It’s God’s way of helping us preserve the bond with the one we love. At the cost of allowing us to feel pain, God lets us experience a vital absence.

This approach goes against conventional wisdom and the way we think about death. Bonhoeffer’s message could make us think differently about people who have lost a friend to death. Of course, their feelings of loss will normally diminish in intensity over time but these emotions can still serve as signs of spiritual value.

In this way, the absence turns into a kind of presence. We are continually reminded of our loved one, of that person’s place in our life. So long as the gap remains, we feel him or her to belong to us.

That is the way I am now feeling about my friend Bob. Though his bodily presence has disappeared, he remains present to me spiritually. Bonhoeffer is right: the gap abides and God is not taking it away.

Does Bob still feel that way about me?  This question brings us further into the realm of mystery. The very act of asking it plunges the questioner deeper into reality than we can handle.

Yes, I believe that my friend can still hold me in affection. Yet, I have no evidence for this nor do I want such proof. Rather, I leave it to the realm of hope rather than science. That is the way Bob would have approached the question, had I been the one to die first.

To me, Bob’s life was worth so much, was so precious that I cannot imagine it lost. The gap that I feel serves for me as testimony of my friend’s ongoing life. The convergence of faith, hope, and love that we shared suggests a communion of friendship that abides.

Richard Griffin

Beyond Death

A visit to a wake or funeral always stirs in me the ultimate question: What lies in store for us beyond the grave? Though I often see mourners who give every indication of ignoring the question, I cannot do so myself. This greatest of mysteries never fails to provoke my wonder.

Sometimes one receives from people in their last days indications of what might be the experience of living after death. Such recently came to my attention when friends revealed what two women said when they were dying.

The first, Daria, described what she was going through by the single word “surreal.” I do not have details that might enable me to judge what she meant by this expression. But I suspect that it was for her a premonition of what death would bring.

She would seem to have had some kind of vision of a reality different from that of our everyday world. It was apparently an experience of awe that promised something that she had never known previously.

Amazingly, the second woman, Marj, used the same expression: “this is a surreal experience.”  As if in confirmation of this awesome sequence of inner events, she then added: “I feel as though this is happening to someone else.”

But she found another metaphor in her love of sailing. Nothing pleased her so much as heading out on her boat accompanied by friends, with the wind in her face and herself sitting at the helm. A charming photo on her funeral program shows her sitting cross-legged, on the boat, the ocean in the background, a floppy hat protecting her from the sun, and a broad smile on her face.

Shortly before her death, she said to a priest who was ministering to her: “I hope heaven is another ocean.” These words struck me as a beautiful statement of what the next life could be. For Marj, it featured the activity that she had most favored in life.

Presumably, heaven would bring all the beauty of water, wind, sand, stars, the company of fellow seafarers and whatever else made for pleasure on earth. Except now, it would be unimaginably enhanced.

My book group this month is reading My Antonia, a classic novel by the 20th century American writer Willa Cather. In it she tells the story of a young boy, Jim, who has been sent from Virginia to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. The farm they run is isolated from human society, but it brings the boy close to nature.

One warm day Jim lies down in the middle of the family garden, to rest and take in the surroundings. “I kept as still as I could,” he says. “Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.”

He continues: “I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun or air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

As a reader, I find myself skeptical that a young boy would have such deep reflections about death. However, I especially identify with becoming part of goodness and knowledge, part of something complete and great. Transposed into more standard religious terms, this description would seem to be expressive of union with God.

A writer friend, Fred Buechner, approaches the mystery from a different perspective. He detects intimations of immortality as he tells of answering a question that his mother, in old age, posed to him out of the blue. “Do you really believe anything happens after you die?”

In one of his responses, her son writes about the way life feels to him: “It feels as though, at the innermost heart of it, there is Holiness, and that we experience all the horrors that go on both around us and within us as horrors rather than as just the way the cookie crumbles because, in our own innermost hearts, we belong to Holiness.”

Amen.

Richard Griffin

Newspapers, Especially the Times

Since you are reading this column, chances are that you love newspapers. If so, you and I have something important in common.

From my earliest days I have been fascinated by publications that deliver the news of the world, whether of my immediate environs or of far-flung places.  Perhaps it was growing up in a family in which my father was a reporter and then an editor.

On occasion, he would take me to visit his office at the Boston Post and we would walk through the plant where I gaped with awe as the giant presses rolled out thousands of printed papers.

Though nowadays, like my so many of my juniors , I frequently consult the online versions of newspapers, that never satisfies me. Holding the actual newsprint in my hands and turning the pages gives me a tactile experience that I continue to relish. To me, the printed page is a work of art, at its best the product of imagination and inventiveness, and I enjoy handling it.

What prompts these reflections is a recent talk by Daniel Okrent, the so-called Public Editor of the New York Times. His job, sometimes described as the hardest in journalism, is what other newspapers call the ombudsman. He has been hired to represent the readers and to write criticism of the paper when he thinks it is called for.

The New York Times has 1200 employees in its newsroom. Though it is not America’s largest paper by circulation, it sells more than a million copies each day, though nowadays more people read it on line than on paper.

The Times prints an astounding total of a million words each week. (By contrast, Time Magazine prints only fifty thousand.)

These figures suggest the scale on which this famous newspaper operates. It is read all over the world and is renowned for being the paper of record.

Another indication of the Time’s reach is suggested by the experience of Tom Friedman, one of its leading columnists. After he began to list his email address with his column, he received 8,000 messages in three days, after which, in a gesture of self-preservation, he stopped divulging his electronic address.

Now, however, he answers every piece of snail mail he receives, honoring the trouble taken by anyone who writes a message on a piece of paper and bothers to address an envelope.

Daniel Okrent himself receives 450 pieces of mail a day, of which about a hundred require an answer. The biggest complaint he gets about the Times is “Your writing is for rich people.” People accuse the paper of catering to one social class and giving short shrift to others.

Times writers get a lot of abuse from readers. Some of the public send what Okrent calls “vile stuff” to the newspaper, especially to the women writers. The latent violence in American society finds expression in the ranting of readers who indulge in newsprint rage.

It’s also part of Okrent’s job to identify errors, of which there are inevitably a considerable number each day. The philosophy he expresses−“admitting error is a way of enhancing credibility”−motivates this fact-finding activity.

The most difficult journalistic issue that the Public Editor deals with is sourcing. Among other responsibilities, journalists must make sure that the information they report is accurate. When quoting people, they must take pains to do so correctly and see to it that the context is also established properly.

The Times continues to be “wounded” by the Jayson Blair event of last year. On that occasion, a young reporter faked stories, falsely claiming that they were eyewitness reports. It was the main factor that led the executive editor at the Times to resign, and this scandal is still used to discredit the paper.

The Public Editor did not mention one of the features that I most value– crossword puzzles. Doing the Sunday crossword, and the every-other-week double acrostic, has long been a sacred ritual in my household. Fortunately for me, my wife and I do not compete because she is much sharper than I and finishes the puzzles faster.

But the Times, fascinating as it is, could never satisfy the needs of the true newspaper addict. The local press gives evidence of hard work and journalistic skill, and touches our daily lives in important ways. The person who reads only national publications is like the one who votes only in national elections.

Sometimes the press exists on a truly micro level. Looking back to adolescence when I was editor of The Walrus, our school newspaper, I value my apprenticeship in putting news together in readable form. With our own twist, we informed our fellow students, faculty members, and everyone else in our community about what was going on.

By way of continuity, for the last dozen years I have published a paper, The Howl, for residents of my small street and adjoining parts of our neighborhood. This publication I serve as copy boy, reporter, editor, deliverer, and general factotum.

Richard Griffin

Red Sox Ascendant

Now that the players have long since washed the last traces of champagne out of their hair and the general hysteria has cooled, perhaps this veteran Red Sox rooter can share some reflections on our unaccustomed championship.

By contrast with the exultant rhapsodizings of many Boston sportswriters, allow me to indulge in some Scroogean thinking about the new status of our favorites. Being on top has its downside, I will argue, so if you are still swept away by the exploits of the Sox, you may wish to stop reading here.

My credentials for freelance musing about the Red Sox must be acknowledged as solid. Endowed with free passes from my newspaperman father, I first became accustomed to Fenway Park and the athletes who performed there in the middle 1930s. Often he would take me to Kenmore Square after my weekly piano lesson, holding out the sweetener of a game after I endured unwelcome instruction at the keyboard.

From the beginning, the Red Sox were my favorites, easily beating in my affections the other Boston team, the Bees. The Fenway sluggers−Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, and later, Ted Williams−used to keep me awed with their home runs, a factor that made me forgive the team’s inconstant pitching.  

My father, however, favored the Bees, a downtrodden team that showed no promise of finishing in the first division, much less first place. In 1940, under Casey Stengel as manager, the Boston Bees finished last with a record of 65 wins and 87 losses while drawing only 241,616 fans for the whole season.

Another credential as a fan comes from my having played baseball throughout my life. Even now I perform, often ingloriously, in a weekly game of softball, the ball being hard enough to come close to the real thing.

Only rarely do I actually attend a Red Sox game nowadays, however. It has been two years since I saw my last one in person. Among other things, the games last too long for my taste. In the World Series of 1918 when the Sox beat the Cubs, every game finished in under two hours; this fall, every one lasted at least an hour longer.

And why must patriotism require spectators to listen, every last of the seventh, to some pop star rendering God Bless America, and then wait until television airs its usual ads?

Late in the season, and certainly by the playoffs, the northern United States is too cold for baseball. I do not relish sitting immobile outside while freezing.

Also, the tickets are too expensive, many for seats that test your eyesight. Every game is a sellout, which means that you have precious little space to stretch. Where have the joys of rooting for a last-place team gone?

Now, by contrast with earlier days, hype plays a major role in every part of the game. The ball players exchange high fives (or head bumpings) for ground ball outs that may have advanced a runner one base. Similarly, they will congratulate a fellow player for hitting a routine fly ball that enables someone to move from second base to third, or for successfully executing a bunt. Such actions belong to an atmosphere of exaggeration that pervades the sport.

Despite its defenders, I still regard the American League’s designated hitter rule as spoiling the game. It enables athletes with only half of baseball’s basic skills to play, and bans from full participation in the contest pitchers who are exempted from doing what every other player must do.

Specialization does not please me either. Must we regard as a full participant a pitcher who appears only in the eighth inning of a game and then retires to the bench?

That so few players remain with one team throughout their career also disgruntles me. There is nothing quite like rooting for a Yaztremski or a Jim Rice for many seasons as you watch their athletic development on your own home ground.

Of course, I am aware of the faults of the past. The players of the 1930s when I first started following baseball were chattels of the owners. And the Red Sox refusal to begin hiring players of color until 1959 still stands as disgraceful.

My principal reason from feeling less than ecstatic about the sudden leap in Red Sox status, I fear, will deserve a special award for perversity. It is because I mourn the loss of the mystique that endeared the team to so many of us fans.

Now they have become winners like all the champions that ever were. Gone is that altogether special character that came with always managing to lose, even when ultimate victory was a single pitch or ground ball away.

Must I now transfer allegiance to the Chicago Cubs in order to reclaim that precious mystique that went with my team being ultimate losers?

Richard Griffin

Spiritual Friendship

When I took religious vows, a colleague sent me a poem that he had written to commemorate the occasion. A person of considerable literary talent, David was able to reach into the significance of this ceremony and express its meaning beautifully.

A few introductory words made clear that David intended the poem “for a blessing.” The main theme of this 17-line poem, the original still preserved in my files, is to ask questions about the effort of the will to “fix itself in good.” David suggests that one should pray for “that last and certain knowledge of the heart’s/Renewed surrender to untrammeled grace.”

These words have remained important to me over half a century because they give evidence not only of a spiritual ideal but also of a precious relationship. First formed when David and I were apprentices in the Jesuit novitiate, ours can be called a spiritual friendship, a bond that has strengthened the values held by both of us.

My friend David and I do not often see one another now because we live too far apart. However, when we do get together, it becomes immediately obvious that the spiritual bond between us remains strong. The passage of years has not damaged the affection that we feel for each other and the serious interest in spirituality that has always marked our friendship.

Spiritual friendships have a long and valued history in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and no doubt in others as well. In the Hebrew Bible, David and Jonathan show forth some of the beauty in such a relationship. So does the friendship of Ruth and Naomi in the Book of Ruth.

In later times, St. Augustine writes about the subject with typical insight. Of his friendship with a man named Alypius, he wrote in 394 or 395: “Anyone who knows us both would say that he and I are distinct individuals in body only, not in mind.”

Two centuries later, Gregory the Great called this kind of friend the “guardian of one’s soul” (custos animae, in Latin). Such a definition, however, suggests a level of level of intimacy that is rare.

Spiritual friendship differs from the general kind by having as link the sharing of ideals. It also often features the exchange of experiences in the search for God. Soul brothers and sisters find satisfaction in helping one another in the ongoing pursuit of ultimate meaning.

In times of struggle, this bond becomes especially important. When we tire of keeping to our spiritual ideals and feel tempted to abandon the interior life, then we need the support of at least one other person.

Exchanging experiences in prayer can be part of it. You feel the need to complain of distractions and temptations, for instance, and reach out to your friend.

For not a few people, however, the big problem is not having such a friend. How is it possible to find someone who can become one’s soul brother or sister?

One suggestion is to find a community where people like you come together. Of course, church, synagogue, mosque or other place of worship might provide potential friends if you relate to such. Discovering a prayer group has given me friends who have graced me with various spiritual benefits.

Such a friendship should be seen as a gift. We can ask God to bestow it on us though, in most instances, to be so gifted one must reach out to others.

For those who are truly fortunate in marriage, they may find in their spouse a true spiritual friend. When that goes together with marital love, it is a precious combination. Then one does not need to reach out far to find vital friendship built on spiritual values, because it remains close at hand. Unfortunately, the real world does not feature this ideal marriage often enough.

For Christians, of course, Jesus remains the great practitioner of friendship. He called his disciples friends and seems to have had a particularly close personal relationship to St. John.

Jesus also provided a definition of friendship at its most sublime: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Inspired by these words, more than a few people, throughout recorded history, have made this sacrifice of themselves out of love for others.

Richard Griffin