Jesuits in training, 1952-54: Debating Joe McCarthy, walks in the woods, getting along . . .

For the greater glory of God . . .

DEBATABLE   Not all literature in the two years of “juniorate.” Four of us got caught up in Sen. Joe McCarthy and his anti-communist activities as a debate topic.  There was also a debate about evolution — “just a theory, remember that,” one of these debaters told me.  I lacked strong conviction on the subject.  Debates were held in front of both novices and juniors, a few each year.    When my turn came, the issue was vernacular liturgy.  My partner and I defended it as the wave of the future, little knowing how right we were.  Nor did I know how my opinion in the matter would change, but none of that right now, please.  

It was all for the greater glory of God, in the Jesuit tradition, of course.  But in debate as on the ball field, we played to win.  “Is this your contribution to the greater glory of God?” a state college professor was said to have asked a Jesuit high school graduate who had routinely placed his “A.M.D.G.” (“Ad majorem Dei gloriam”) at the top of a poorly done paper.  We weren’t supposed to do poorly.  Besides, it was fun to compete and more fun to win.  My partner and I won our debate, as I recall.  And that was fun.

All in all, not counting the stresses and strains I mentioned earlier, the juniorate played to my strong suits and my strong interests.  It was bookish, with emphasis on clear and memorable expression.  It was verbal.  It was histrionic and oratorical and closed-circuited, meaning it was with people I knew in a familiar environment. I can still picture the library on the second floor in a corner of the building, with its shelves and windows looking out on tree-shaded, leafy grounds.  

Ours was not a purely institutional setting, but part of an estate, as was not unusual for Jesuit houses of training.  It’s as if the Jesuits had been awaiting the dissolution of country houses in the 1920s and 30s, ready to take them off the hands of owners who couldn’t afford them or didn’t want them.  This Milford site, however, was not donated but was bought by Xavier University in 1925.  

BUDDIES   We were in the countryside, on a river, near a small suburb.  From our building we could fan out in walks on country roads and wooded trails.  We did so in pairs in the juniorate, bringing matches for a small fire on which to toast cheese sandwiches or fry eggs and heat coffee.  There two of us would sit, propped against a tree, cooking and eating and drinking, discussing the work of the day, our world as we saw it, mocking a teacher here and there who seemed to deserve it.  

We picked walk partners.  As novices we had been assigned them.  It was considered important to mix them up, not always pairing with a buddy.  Sometimes you were to pick a non-buddy or even someone who irritated you.  It was up to you to get to know the guy, try to bridge the gap—of family background, ethnicity, interests.  Moved by Christian charity or community spirit, you took an interest in people you might never have talked to on the outside.  I mentioned this to the novice master once and elicited a patented frown for my comment.  He wasn’t about to dignify that problem but sternly spoke the ideal.  The idea was, just do it, without even hinting at difficulty in getting along with others.  He didn’t want to hear about it.  

The juniorate dean, John McGrail, landed more lightly but no less tellingly.  He would speak up for team sports, for instance, as opposed to swimming, running, or even handball.  On a touch football or softball team, you performed as a unit.  You had to communicate with each other.  Running right instead of left as agreed, you screwed up the play.  Going for a bad pitch and striking out, you left others in the lurch.  Handball doubles qualified, but less so than six-man football or softball.  Basketball too, though at Milford we had only a single backboard and were limited to three-man teams.  

McGrail did not spell this out or drum home the point.  He made it only once, but it stayed with me.  I also remember him after a touchball game, when my team had lost and I was mad and showed it.  From a group he looked at me quizzically: I responded, “Well I wanted to win!”  I tended to overdo my response, which is why he had the look, I’m sure.  When someone you respect gives you a look, you remember it. 

Later, when he was rector at West Baden — our next stop — he spoke once publicly against shyness as doing no one any good.  Suffering an attack of diffidence at the time, I paid attention.   McGrail was very important to the juniorate experience.  I told him so in a letter years later.  He was in his eighties at the time and was playing daily golf, I heard, almost certainly with fellow Jesuits, probably at a local daily-fee course.  He died at 91 in 2002 after 74 years as a Jesuit, over 60 as a priest!  He had a lifetime of being in charge of others and from all I have heard never outstayed his welcome in a half dozen or more major leadership posts.  When we left Milford for West Baden and philosophy, he came with us, no longer as dean but as rector.  His lotus-eating days were over too.

So went the juniorate.  Four Milford years were gone, four years of training completed, the normal cycle.  The older ones among us did juniorate in a year or skipped it entirely, like my brother, ten years older than I. 

Bidding farewell on an August day in 1954 as the bus idled at the front door, I told Paul Allen, who had so encouraged writing for publication, that I would keep it up if I kept anything up in philosophy.  As extracurricular, I added, when he looked briefly put off, as if I were to neglect my primary duties.    I didn’t know then how sorely tempted I would be to do just that.  Minutes later we were off to southern Indiana.  Orange County, we were on our way.