The Story of a Chicano Jesuit Priest

MEMORIAS/AUTOBIOGRAPHY

MULTIPLE CONVERSIONS

by

Rev. Edmundo Rodriguez, SJ

Introduction – by Fr. Juan Romero – July 31, 2025

  On the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, I slightly edited this Story of a Chicano Priest, autobiography of Fr. Edmundo Rodriguez, S.J.

Jesuit priest Fr. Tom Steele taught me much about the history of all-things New Mexican and was a great partner in my study and writings about the life and legacy of Padre Antonio José Martínez, Cura de Taos as featured in this blog The Taos Connection. However, the much greater Jesuit influence in my life has been Fr. Edmundo Rodriguez lovingly called Mundo. He was a major mentor for me in the early ‘70s when I was executive director of the PADRES organization—the national association of Chicano priests based in San Antonio. Father Rodriguez, SJ was one of the founders of the group and was well accomplished in many other fields. He finished his earthly course on October 28, 2017. May he remain active in heaven as intercessor for us to continue carrying out his vision for the Church and the world. I regret that his home photos of the autobiography did not translate to this rendition.

Foreword

This autobiographic sketch is intended mainly for the members of my own family. I call it “Multiple Conversions” because at every stage of my life, I have experienced large and small metanoias, namely changes of perspective and paradigm shifts in my thinking and understanding.  Such “conversions” have usually come through interaction with people, and I am and have been blessed to have interacted with significant people all my life, beginning with my parents, brothers, and sisters.  Then, of course, there are the Jesuits and other religious figures who have touched me and influenced me.  But the strongest impact on my mental, emotional, and spiritual formation has come from the many memorable people whom I have met along the way: from great intellectuals to trabajadores analfabetos, to those whose courage and wisdom have challenged me to try to be a better person.

I am most grateful to God, our Creator and Lord, for directing my life and putting all those wonderful, challenging, instructive, and caring people in it. I am grateful to everyone who has occasioned a metanoia in me.  I only pray that these pages may reflect that sense of gratitude.

Chapter One: Chicano Boy

I, Edmundo Rodriguez, Jr., a Jesuit priest, a member of the Society of Jesus, write these memoirs at the age of 73, an age when I can more readily remember events from 60 years ago than from yesterday.  I call myself a Chicano because the word was accepted without opprobrium or political implication in the barrio in El Paso where I was born and grew up.  Later, of course, the word “Chicano” became politicized, and it seemed to be a good way of expressing the acquired awareness of the situation of the Mexican American poor in the United States, so I accept it in that fashion as well.

I was born at home at a small two-room apartment: 109 ABC Alley in El Paso, TX.  The alley was between El Paso Street and Santa Fe Street, and between Overland Street and Paisano Drive.  My father, Sergio Edmundo, was born in Torreon, Coahuila Mexico.  His father’s name was Isaac Olivan Rodriguez, and he died when my father was only a year old.  His mother was Rebeca Campos, an elementary school teacher.  As far as I can tell, my [paternal] grandparents were Protestants, and my father was baptized into the Episcopal Church.  My grandmother Rebeca later remarried a Mr. Navarro, so we knew her as Rebecca Campos Navarro.  Mr. Navarro had several children who became my father’s half-brothers and sisters:  Estela, Raquel, Isidoro, and Carmen. Mr. Navarro died some years before I was born.   The family moved first to Juarez and then eventually to El Paso.  My grandmother Rebeca became a devout Baptist and a formidable anti-Catholic.

My uncle Isidoro Navarro better known as Lolo, served in WWII as a medical orderly for the Army Air Corps, picking up dead and wounded soldiers in the European theater of war.  The experience left him with deep PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), although the condition was not yet named.  For the rest of his life, he suffered from depression.  He was a very talented athlete, could have been a pro quarterback.  In fact, it was sports–particularly basketball–that helped him survive.  His marriages didn’t.  Before he went off to war, he had married a Catholic at a Midnight Mass on Christmas Day at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso.  This kind of wedding will probably never happen again—ever! 

I have fond memories of my uncle Lolo because both before he went into the Armed Forces and after he returned, he always gave time to the little kids of the barrio: to teach them how to catch a football, and dribble and shoot a basketball.  I’ll never forget his first day back from the war.  We all went into the alley, and he threw us a few passes.  Then he dropkicked the football high over the electrical wires.  We kids– I was eleven years old–just stood there in awe.  Then we all started to yell, “Do it again!  Do it again!”   And he did it twice more.  The first dropkick had not been a fluke.

My first conversion was what I learned from Uncle Lolo:  be good to the kids in the neighborhood.  In fact, I used to dream of building a gym in the middle of the barrio so that all the kids could play somewhere besides the alley where we had to be on constant watch for cars.  First conversion:  from thinking mainly about myself and my own needs, to caring about the other children in our neighborhood.  It was a small but significant conversion that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

My father, Edmundo, Sr., as a boy, always

felt like an outsider in his own family.  From what he told me, his stepfather had little use for him, and so he spent a lot of time on the street, often helping the garrero, that is, the man who brought his horse and wagon into the neighborhood to pick up discarded clothing, rags, and anything else that might have a little value.  The old barrio was a place where venders came walking through every day selling their wares, sharpening knives, and scissors–offering to do repairs of stoves, watches, sewing machines and the like.  It was not unusual for a kid to run on ahead of the vender to announce his coming.  My father did that, so from very early on, he developed a good way of dealing with the public.  As an adult he made myriads of friends and became quite a good performer with both Mariachi and dance orchestras.  I never found out how he learned to play the guitar or how he learned to make orchestra arrangements, but he did, and became quite good at it all.  He was intelligent, well-read, hard working, and somewhat high strung.   That’s probably why he used alcohol to calm down, especially when he had worked at a clothing factory all day and then went off to play gigs at night.

(My mom, Naná. and my sister Elisa.)

My mother, Ignacia Escajeda, was born in San Elizario, TX, an old Spanish town that dates to the 1600’s. Her life was a hard-scrabble farm life.  She told me at one time that she resented the fact that her father, Jose, was not able to pull the family out of poverty.  She never explained why she felt that way.  Her mother was Romana Moreno.  As I remember her, grandma Romanita was a great cook, especially when it came to making a green chili and cheese concoction. She and I used to sit and enjoy with tears streaming down our cheeks because the chili was so hot.

I spent the summers between 1944 and 1949 with my Escajeda grandparents who lived in an adobe house about a mile from the center of San Elizario.  The house was surrounded by fields of cotton and alfalfa.  As it happened, I was able to do farm work during those years:  I hoed weeds, picked cotton, bailed alfalfa, and at two in the morning helped to open the compuertas (gates) to irrigate the cotton fields.  This was necessary because the water district assigned times for irrigation that had to be observed or the opportunity would be lost.  The Escajeda house had no electricity or running water.  Kerosene lamps supplied light; a pump in the kitchen supplied water.  But the pump in the kitchen supplied water with a slightly salty taste, so we had to take buckets and bring drinking water from another pump some 100 yards away that had sweet water.  It also happened that the sweet water pump was close to an acequia (ditch) that had a small snake pit.  My cousin Tavo (Gustavo Baltierra), who had been orphaned as a baby and whom my grandparents were raising as their own child, and I often brought our B-B guns over to shoot at the snakes.  Whether we ever killed any of them, I do not recall.

So, without radio or television, what could we do for entertainment at night?  It was not a problem.  Don Jose, my grandfather, would take us out into the star-lit skies and have us lie down on a blanket.  The stars were so bright they almost seem to be ready to fall upon us.  Then he would begin telling us stories.  The stories fired up our imaginations, so who needed the cool medium of TV while storytelling was so wonderfully exciting?  I have collected a couple of these stories from memory and attached them as an appendix to this piece.

During the regular school year back in El Paso, rumors of war were rife.  We heard that the Russians had an atomic bomb and that they were ready to launch it against the United States.  El Paso was supposed to be one of the top ten targets because of the presence of Fort Bliss.  At school we had atomic bomb drills, and this meant getting under our desks and protecting our heads with our arms.  We also learned that if an attack came while we were at home, we should cover ourselves with white sheets to ward off the radiation.  All of that seems preposterous now, but it caused us children to live in perpetual fear of annihilation.  I determined to hold off such a catastrophe by prayer.  So, every night I said three Hail Marys to beg Our Lady to fend off an atomic war.  I suppose I was not the only one making such prayers in the post WWII days.

During the summers, while I was out in the rancho with my grandparents, I had recurring dreams of El Paso being blown to bits by an atom bomb and my parents and siblings all getting killed.  In the morning, I had to get reassurance from my abuela that nothing like that had in reality happened.   This memory makes me think that those of my generation were victims of an atomic war, even though the hot war did not happen then. 

I was probably seven years old when I experienced my most profound experience of God.  I was by myself, just sitting and thinking, when this euphoric sense of peace and consolation came over me.  Later, I might have described it as an out-of-body experience, but at that time it was just what St. Ignatius Loyola called “consolation without previous cause.”  I didn’t have the words to describe the experience at that time, but I do remember feeling that somehow God was possessing me, and I had no doubt that it was God.  Even now, in my seventies, I remember the experience vividly and do not doubt that it was God who was present to me.  The experience only lasted a minute or so, although it seemed much longer.  I never told anyone about it, and there seemed no reason to do so.  I was not scared, nor did I feel that I was facing some mystery.  The experience seemed perfectly natural at the time.  Although the experience was never repeated quite the same way, there have been critical times in my life when the memory of it has come back and given me strength and perspective.

An experience that influenced my perspective later was my mother taking me to a migrant worker camp when I was about ten years old.  She accompanied another lady, and the two of them were bringing some food and clothing for the migrants.  I’ll never forget that getting into the migrant camp was like getting into a prison.  The camp was fenced in.  To get in, my mother and the lady, whose name I cannot recall, had to say to the guard at the entrance to the camp that they were related to someone in the camp.  I noticed then that there was a little store in the middle of the camp. 

The migrant camp experience was simply data stored away in my memory, until later in the ’50’s, when, at a social science class at Bowie High School in El Paso, we studied the closed system of Pullman, PA.  It seems that workers for the Pullman Company were pretty much trapped because their salaries were low and the prices at the company store were high, so most of the workers were in debt to the company, and therefore could not leave for other work in other places.

Just a couple of other items may be of interest from my childhood and adolescence.  I used to love to put on “plays” in the house and in the neighborhood.  In the neighborhood we usually strung a clothesline from one post to another in the area by the apartments at the corner of Santa Fe and Second Street, draped a sheet or blanket over it and that was our “theatrical curtain”.  Then we would make up a story to enact.  I used to go to the variedades (live skits at the movie theatres, usually before a movie) with my grandmother Rebeca, so it filled my head with visions of acting and directing and fame. 

I was probably nine years old when I decided we would have a play inside the apartment on Santa Fe Street.  Unfortunately, I tied a string to the chest of drawers on one side of the room and to the knob of my father’s guitar amplifier on the other.  Once everything was set, I pulled the curtain. The amplifier came crashing down on the floor, breaking several of the tubes in it.  (Nothing was transistorized in those days.)  My mother heard the crash and, in a panic, rushed in. As it happened, my father had a gig that very evening and would need the amplifier.  She grabbed me by the hand and took me right over to El Paso Street where all the shops were.  We went from shop to shop, any place that might have replacement tubes.  We found a few, but not all.  So, the amplifier was caput!  It was almost time for my dad to come home from work, and then I panicked.  I knew he could be really upset and would take his belt to me, so I ran outside to the telephone pole and climbed up on the roof of the apartments.   I just sat and waited.  Soon, my dad, my mother, my siblings, and sundry neighbors gathered below me urging me to come down before it got dark. They thought I might fall and hurt myself, but the more they urged, the more scared I became, and the more I refused to come down.  Finally, I said I would come down if they went and got my grandma Rebeca to come.  Someone went and got her, and so I came down under her protection.  I remember that whole incident as though it were yesterday.

Making real bombs: “Don’t try this at home.”

Some of my contemporaries from the old barrio will recognize the “toys” we played with as kids.  First, there were the stilts that one made with two tall slats of wood and with small blocks nailed to them.  You became seven feet tall.  Then there was the skate box, which was made by nailing two old skates on a board and then nailing a wooden box on top. Wheee! Off we went.

 Since we were close to Juarez, bullfighting was one of our favorite games.  One kid would be the bull with a piece of wood for horns, and the other the bullfighter with a towel for a cape.  We sometimes went out on the street and tried bullfighting the passing cars!  We terrified the drivers, who stopped and cursed us while we ran away.  Then there were the more dangerous toys:  the toy guns made from clothespins and rubber bands, which could shoot stick matches that lit the match as it was propelled toward the victim. Sometimes we ignited somebody’s shirt—never fatal, however.  As there no computer games, we had to play outside.  One of our games was to dig a small hole in a vacant lot, get some dry grass, build a smoldering fire, put a few sticks on top to cover the hole, take off our shoes, hide them, and wait for a kid with shoes to come stomp out the “fire”.  He, of course, would stomp right into the hole.  It was a miracle nobody ever broke a leg.

 But the most sensational toy of all was a kind of Molotov cocktail that I will now describe.  Do not try this at home. The movie theatres used a very volatile type of film in those days.  When the film broke, the operator would cut off a piece and splice the remainder together.  The pieces would end up in the trash can.  We, kids, would rummage in the theatre’s trashcans and rescue those pieces of film.  Then we would get a Coke bottle.  Now, on Overland Street, close to Santa Fe Street, there was a burned-out building that had had a basement.  It was perfect for bomb throwing.  We would stuff the film into the Coke bottle, light it with a match, and cap the bottle all in one motion, then drop it into the burnt-out basement.  The bottle would explode on the way down with a big bang.  How did we escape being injured?  We lay on our bellies on the pavement as we dropped the bottles so that we would be protected from the flying glass.  We also made sure no adults were in evidence so that we wouldn’t get punished.  Again, don’t try this at home!

Chapter Two: Becoming a Jesuit

As I entered my Senior Year at Bowie High

School, I began to plan my future.  My immediate plans were to get into the co-op program at New Mexico State University and study biochemistry.  The U.S. Government had scholarship funds for those who were willing to engage in the sciences.  I dreamed of earning a college degree, getting a good job, and marrying my sweetheart, to whom I was very attached. 

But it seems that God had other plans.   I began to think that I should be a priest.  Such thoughts had never crossed my mind before, so I figured this was a mistake and I tried to put such thoughts aside as temptations that should be rejected immediately.  But the thoughts would not go away.  I remember going to St. Ignatius Church one evening and pleading with God to take these thoughts away from me.  But God did not hear my prayer.  So, I gave in, and told my parish priest, Father Morales, that I was thinking about the priesthood.  He quickly took me to Bishop Sidney Metzger who told me, after a brief interview, that he would send me to the diocesan seminary in Santa Fe in the fall.  So, how did I end up with the Jesuits?

One Sunday afternoon, I emerged from the Plaza Movie Theater and bumped into Father Harold Rahm, S. J., with whom I was already well acquainted.  He said to me, “How would you like to meet our Father Provincial?”  “Who is that?” I asked.  “He’s our boss,” Rahm said.  “Why not?” I replied.  So that evening I appeared at the door of Sacred Heart Rectory.  “I have an appointment with Father Pro…something,” I told Father Bob Gafford, S. J. who answered the door.  He ushered me into Father Provincial’s room.  “I’m Father William Crandall,” he said, “Why do you want to become a Jesuit?”   “What is a Jesuit?” I asked.  What ensued was a long conversation, and a promise by Father Provincial that if I applied, I would be accepted into the Jesuit Novitiate. 

Now I was in a crisis.  I was accepted by the both the Bishop as well as by the Jesuit Provincial, and was not at all ready to give up my dream of getting a college education and marrying a girl whom I loved very much.  Accepting either invitation would mean the shattering of that dream.  So, I decided to apply to the Jesuits because by that time I had heard that the Jesuits had high standards for admitting candidates to the Novitiate.  I figured that if the Jesuits rejected my application, I could say to God, “Look, Lord, I did my best to become a priest, but I was not accepted.”  The Jesuits did not cooperate with my plan.  They sent a letter of acceptance and asked me to go to three interviews with Jesuits in El Paso.  I went to the interviews and shortly after I received a letter telling me when to come and what to bring to the Novitiate. 

Now I was in real trouble.  First, I had to tell my girl and she would not be at all happy.  Then I had to tell my father, Edmundo, Sr. He was not Catholic, but I had no idea how anti-clerical he was until I told him that I was going away to become a priest.  At first, he tried to convince me that I would be much happier married and earning money than trying to live the lonely, unproductive life of a priest.  During this time, he showed me unflattering photos of bishops and priests.  “You don’t want to be like them,” he told me.  Then he reminded me that I was his eldest son and that he expected me to provide an heir to the Rodriguez name.  This was especially important to him because he had been an only child himself.  I persisted in my plans to enter the Novitiate, so he simply stopped talking to me.  Only the very day that I was to board the train to Louisiana, when I went to say good-bye to him at his work, did he talk to me.  He came to say good-bye at the train station, but I knew he was not reconciled to my going.

On August 12^th, 1953, after my graduation from High School, I took a train to New Orleans.  Father Harold Rahm, S. J., the young priest who had chosen to work with gangs in South El Paso, told me to visit Jesuit High School in New Orleans.  The Jesuits at the JHS had no idea who I was since Father Rahm had forgotten to call ahead.  Nevertheless, the Jesuits at JHS believed me when I told them I was on my way to Grand Coteau to enter as a Novice.  To keep me occupied, the Minister of the House gave me some streetcar tokens and suggested I take the Canal Street trolley and take in the downtown sights. 

My trip to downtown New Orleans was a real shocker.  The Canal Street trolleys had two places to mount them:  one at the front, where the conductor sat, and one in the back, where there was a place to put in a token or coins.  I chose to enter through the back.  I put my token in and sat down.  The streetcar went half a block and then came to a screeching stop right in the middle of the block.  The conductor screamed out, “What do you think you’re doing?”  I had no idea he was screaming at me, so I just continued to sit there quietly.  So, the conductor raised his voice even more, “What do you think you’re doing!?”  I still sat quietly.  So now the conductor came right to the back of the trolley and leaned into my face: “What are you doing here?”  “I’m going downtown,” I said, confused by his vehemence.  “This is the colored section.  You gotta move,” he said to me.  By now, the other passengers were very quiet and just watching to see what would happen.  I got up and moved to the front, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.   I had just experienced racism at its rawest, and it would not be the last time during my years of sojourn through the Southern United States.

The Jesuit Novitiate was pretty much as it had been for some generations.  Romanita Escajeda, my maternal grandmother, died while I was making the Long Retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.  The fact had a profound impact on me because she had been like a second mother to me.  In those days we could not go home for such happenings.  I simply wrote a poem in her honor and wrote about her in my spiritual journal.  The Spiritual Exercises experience helped me get close to Jesus in his life, passion, and death.  Because of my grandpa Don Jose’s Manita Zorra and Manito Coyote stories under the stars, my imagination quickly became engaged in contemplations based on the Gospels.  The imaginative contemplations on the life of Jesus are the most powerful, most impact-producing forms of prayer of the Exercises.  In retrospect, it seems to me that experience gave me the confidence to pronounce my First Vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience on August 15, 1955.

Before we go to August 16, 1955, I should say something about the men I encountered in the Novitiate.  Some men came all the way from Tampa, FL., just as I had come from El Paso, TX.  There were men from Dallas, from New Orleans, from Mobile, AL., and from Macon, GA.  Most were 17 or 18 years old, but we did have some veterans who were a bit older.  Frank Renfroe from Dallas had already been drafted into the Navy, so he had to leave the Novitiate to fulfill his term of duty.  He returned to the Novitiate two years later and eventually got ordained as a Jesuit priest, did work as a missionary in Paraguay and as of this writing, is working in El Paso as a jail chaplain. 

Most of the new novices were good students and some were outstanding athletes.  As time went on, about half of the original group of 32, decided to go back to “civilian” life.

Chapter Three: The Jesuit Scholastic

After vows, we became Jesuit Scholastics, which meant that we moved across the center of the house from the East Wing to the West Wing.  But that short journey was like one of a thousand miles.  In the Juniorate, as the West Wing was called, we received a fabulous liberal arts education in English and World Literature, in Mathematics, and in Spanish, Latin, and Greek.  Our professors were outstanding, especially C. J. McNaspy, S.J., who was a recognized author and lecturer.  Those two years prepared me well for both the study of philosophy and for graduate school.

In August 1957, our class moved to study at the Philosophate of Spring Hill College at Mobile, AL.  This was the first time in four years that we found ourselves on a co-ed college campus.  It took an adjustment to go from an all-male environment to a mixed one.  Several of us had to work through emotional crises, including myself, for the old dream– earning a college degree, finding a good job, and having a family– had not died altogether.  Nevertheless, I adjusted and was able to do well in both the study of philosophy and the other subjects.  At Spring Hill College, I earned a Batchelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree.  My master’s thesis was on a difficult but fascinating philosopher-theologian named Bernard Lonergan, S. J.   He was newly come upon the philosophical scene with a book called Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.  Reading that book, studying it, and writing about it were some of the most intellectually fulfilling experiences of my life.  I have continued to use his ideas and methods throughout my ministry; I (and others) have developed leadership courses based on Insight.

Most of us had some sort of ministry outside the academic walls.  I chose to team up with two of my classmates and help at a recreation center in the African American section of Mobile.  We organized games and tournaments, coached the kids, and went around to various high schools begging footballs, baseballs, bats, helmets, and whatever else we could get.  Of course, what we got were hand-me-downs, but to us that equipment was precious. 

There is one poignant moment that sticks out in my memory from that time.  One of the young men, a senior in High School, dropped out of High School in February with only three months to go before graduation.  “Why?” I asked him, “What is so hard about finishing?  You’re doing well. Why not graduate?”  James replied with a question: “Do you know my father?”  “Yes,” I said.  “What does he do?” James asked.  “He’s a custodian at the College,” I said.  “Do you know he went to two years of college?” James said, “and if he can only be a custodian after finishing high school and having two years of college, what’s going to be different for me if I finish high school?”  I was stunned.  In 1959, I had no answer to his question.  James felt overwhelmed by the specter of racism in the South and saw no way beyond the limitations it imposed on him and on young men like him.  Talk about conversion, there is no more eye-opening experience than to see reality through the eyes of those who experience racism in its most raw form.

Later that year, we had a lecture by John Howard Griffin who wrote the book Black Like Me.  He was a white man who changed his skin pigmentation to look like an African American and then went to New Orleans to live as an African American.  He spoke how former friends just could not see him because whenever they encountered him, they would simply look past him as though he weren’t even there.  In the book, he describes how he was treated by Whites: always as an inferior, always looked down upon.  Reading his book and listening to him had a profound influence on me and on my Jesuit classmates.  We started listening to the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., by short-wave radio on Sundays.  I believe that our superiors, who were men who had grown up in the segregated South, became a bit frightened of the new attitudes we Scholastics were acquiring.  After all, we were going to have to work in a South that would still be segregated.

Chapter Four: Teaching as A Scholastic

These events prepared me well for what I was going to be asked to do during my years of Regency, the term that Jesuits use for the formation period during which Scholastics teach in one of our high schools.  In 1960, I was assigned to teach at Jesuit High School in Tampa, FL.  It was a very comfortable assignment.  The student body was made up of Anglos and Cuban Hispanics.  They all got along relatively well.  There seemed to be no racial or ethnic issues at the school.  The school had a par-three golf course immediately adjacent to it, and I got to hone my short game twice or thrice a week.  As an extracurricular, I was assigned to the drama club.  That meant preparing the boys to perform plays in public.  I had done a bit of drama while at Spring Hill College, but now I had to learn a lot more about doing sophisticated drama, like Twelve Angry Men.  The Juniors and Seniors performed that play very well, but it ran for only two nights. I also had Freshmen and Sophomores in the Club, so for them I wrote a short play, a comedy based on the story of The Littlest Angel.  With costumes made from sheets and pillowcases, the play was such a success that we were invited to perform it at other schools.  It was so good because there were a couple of impish boys who delivered their lines with great timing and expression.   I ended the school year on a high, expecting to return to Tampa to continue along the same lines.  But it was not to be.

During the summers, it was the custom to have Regents (teaching Scholastics) go to Spring Hill College to continue studying.  So, I took the train from Tampa to Mobile and arrived at Spring Hill College and began to settle in.  But the superior came over and said to me: “Don’t unpack, you have another assignment.  I’ll be back in an hour and tell you what you are to do.”  So, I repacked my clothing and waited.  He came back in an hour and said, “Here’s a train ticket.  You are assigned to teach summer school in New Orleans, and you need to get there tonight because you start teaching in the morning.”  “Teaching what?” I asked.  “I don’t know.  They’ll tell you when you get there,” he replied.  That was typical of the way Jesuits were supposed to be ready to teach anything at all on short notice.  Happily, this viewpoint and practice has changed considerably since those days.

It turned out not to be too bad.  I was asked to teach Spanish to boys who had failed it during the year at Jesuit High School in New Orleans.  Since I’d taught Spanish in Tampa, it was not a problem.  So, the summer passed, and I spend my free time choosing and blocking a couple of plays for when I got back to Tampa.  Finally, the end of summer came, and I went to the Treasurer of the School and asked for money to purchase a train ticket to return to Tampa.  “Oh,” he said, “you’re not going back to Tampa.  You’re staying here.  You’d better talk to the principal.”  So, I went in search of the principal, a much-respected Jesuit, who had a reputation of getting only the Scholastics he wanted for his School and no others. I asked him what I was supposed to do in the school year about to begin.  “You will teach English, Spanish, Speech, and Latin to one of the Sophomore classes,” he said.  “By the way,” he continued, “They are the slowest class but have the best athletes.”  “What about extra-curriculars?” I asked, “Will I be in charge of the drama club?”  “No,” he said, “you’ll be coaching football and basketball to the Eighth Graders and the Freshmen and running the intramural sports.”  I was stunned.  I had played football and basketball in high school but had little idea about coaching these sports, so I quickly went to the public library and started reading about coaching.  Boy, was I having to make some quick adjustments!

I started teaching and coaching, and thus I thought I was on my way.  But then the principal called me in and said, “We’re integrating next year.  We have four boys from St. Augustine High School who will be attending here next year.  Two will be in your class, and two will be in the class you now have that will be moving up a grade.  I want you to prepare them.  This is a big change for all of us.”  The whole purpose of my being at Jesuit High School in New Orleans suddenly took a new and challenging turn.  I immediately thought of my experiences in Mobile and realized that that was God’s way of preparing me for this task. 

So, my double task with my class, made up of White boys who had inferiority complexes since they were placed in the “slowest” class, was to build up their sense of self on the one hand, and on the other to break down the prejudices which those same boys bring from their family and social environment.  To build up their self-image, I insisted that they read as many books as the top class.  There were howls of protest that they were not equipped to read that much.  But in their heart of hearts, they knew they would be proud to say, “We read the same number of books as the top class.”  And so it happened.  Another tactic of mine was to have the boys dress up in suits and go together to see college productions of plays.  Antigone was one of those plays.  Nobody else in the whole school had gone to see Antigone, but these boys not only saw it on stage but could “talk about it intelligently (since we had studied it both before and after the stage play).  I could see their self-confidence growing.

Dealing with the prejudices that came from family traditions in New Orleans was a much more difficult task.  I decided to take an academic approach.  So, I looked up everything I could on race relations and made copies of certain essays that we read together and discussed during English Class.  The discussions were good, but I just couldn’t see whether their attitudes were changing or not.  That would not show up until the next year when there would be two African American students in their junior class. 

The following year, I had a new sophomore class with two African American boys in it.  The year started normally.  As far as I could see, the African American boys were simply accepted as fellow students.  No big deal.  I could see that the African American boys were a bit nervous, but nothing said to me that they were being harassed in any way.  Then it happened.  Items began to disappear from their lockers in the gym.  Notes were passed to them that were insulting and degrading.  It became obvious to me that someone was trying to make life miserable enough for them that they would decide to leave the school.  But who was doing all this?  I did not want to guess and accuse anyone falsely, but I kept close watch.  Finally, one of the White boys quietly told me who the culprit was.  Why did he tell me?  Because he knew we had started the year well, but now it was becoming ugly.  One day, in fact, at lunch hour, I saw one of the African American boys dialing on the public phone.  Because he seemed agitated and angry, I came up to him and asked what he was doing.  “I’m calling my friends from St. Aug,” he said, “they’ll come over and we’ll give these White boys what for!”  I could picture us having a race riot on campus.  “Don’t,” I said, “I can assure you this harassment will end shortly.”  He put the phone down, and I sighed a sigh of relief.

So, I was faced with a dilemma.  How could I deal with the culprit without direct evidence?  I talked to the school president and asked him if I could threaten the culprit with expulsion.  “No, you may not,” he told me.  But I was afraid that the harassment would not stop if I did nothing.  So, I decided to take the bull by the horns and use the threat anyway.  I pulled the culprit aside and said to him, “I know you are the one causing all this trouble.  If it continues, you will be expelled from this school.”  I held my breath.  The harassment stopped.  Things got back to normal.

Later, I found out that the culprit was being egged on by people on the White Citizens Council, an organization that vehemently opposed any kind of integration.  While the harassment stopped, I started getting some very ugly phone calls at night.  But that was a small price to pay for relative peace and successful integration at the school.

One other interesting thing that happened to me during my stay in New Orleans was that I was invited to sit at night with Ambassador Raymond Telles’ daughter.  Raymond Telles had been mayor of El Paso before President John F. Kennedy made him ambassador to Costa Rica.  Sadly, his daughter, who only ten years old in 1961, caught encephalitis-a sleeping sickness-and she was brought to Ochsner Medical Center for treatment.  The girl’s mother stayed with her most of the time, but I relieved her for a couple of hours at night.  Every night a big limousine from the United Fruit Company would pull up to the school and would take me to the hospital where I would sit with Cynthia for two hours while her mother rested.  Cynthia and I became good friends but when she left New Orleans, I never saw her again.  Many years later, I learned that Cynthia Telles had become a physician, a pediatrician.  I thought it was a marvelous thing to learn.

Chapter Five: The Jesuit in Theology

After my Regency and some summers at Texas Western College and the University of Texas in Austin, I was sent to St. Mary’s, Kansas to study theology.  That was 1963 just as the Second Vatican Council was beginning.  The first few months were very hard.  St. Mary’s, KS, was a small town in 1963, population less than two thousand people: a public and a Catholic elementary school and a public high school.  We were out in the country and all that activity of the Regency years suddenly came to a halt.  It was difficult to sleep at night because of the noise of the crickets singing their song.  Then of course it meant going back to class, doing papers, and reading assigned books.  Sounds kinda’ boring, ¿no?  It was.

But boring didn’t last too long.  There were some rural parishes that “employed” some of us to go teach in their CCD classes.  I chose to teach second graders.  From them, I learned something very important about teaching.  I would explain something about God—Father Creator, Son Redeemer, Holy Spirit Sanctifier at one class.  Then the next class I would say, “Children, can anyone tell me about what we learned about God last week?”  Several hands shot up.  “Kerry, tell me.”  “My cat had kittens last night,” Kerry said.  All the kids wanted to know how many, what colors, and had he named them yet?  What I learned was that I first needed to listen to the children’s experiences before they were ready to listen to me.

A few years later, I would remember that lesson when my sister Elisa, a Loretto nun, sent me some mimeographed pages of Paulo Freire’s educational methodology.  Freire’s method of alfabetizacion always began with listening to the stories of the campesinos.   Then Freire used those stories and concerns as the basis to teach reading, spelling, and the use the written word.  I later taught the method to some students at the University of Texas in Austin who went out and worked among migrant farm workers.  The students came back very excited about the success of the methodology. 

Theology, of course, is a serious academic endeavor.  It means attending many classes, reading many books, writing many papers, and attending a fair number of seminars.  There is no doubt that learning about the nature of Christ, the Church, and God from top-ranked world theologians is an exciting enterprise.   I loved the study of theology.  Besides the catechetical classes, I also tutored students at the local Catholic grade school.  I, along with others, also formed the public high school students into a choir that performed for their parents and other townspeople.

We Jesuits organized a musical performing group among ourselves.  We had a fellow who played the piano and the bass, and two others played guitar.  Another mainly sang because he had a trained voice, and I played the banjo and did comic songs.  We sang at various school assemblies, at restaurants, at BYOB lounges, and at conventions.  We were creative enough to be able to write comic songs to fit a particular group.  We were good, and our audiences enjoyed our performances.

Another activity in which we engaged was preparing the performing plays, such as Christopher Fry’s Thor with Angels and The Fantastics.  I helped with props in Thor but had an unexpectedly good role as “the dying Indian” in The Fantastics.  We performed it several times in different places and got good reviews even from newspaper critics in Kansas City.  The main reason for our success was the ingenious direction of Joseph Vanderholt, S. J.  He was in the class two years behind mine.  The photo here shows my partner, the late Father Don Driscoll, S. J., in his role as the washed-out Shakespearean actor.

Another activity, in which others and I participated, was a campaign to protest the Kansas housing laws.  In other words, Kansas was quite segregated by housing patterns, and many of us Jesuits and other activists pushed to have the laws changed so that those neighborhoods that had excluded African Americans and other minorities could be integrated.  It was during this activity that I learned about “red lining” of neighborhoods by banks and the use of fear tactics by realtors, which caused Whites to abandon houses, and then they sold at low prices to the realtors.  Then the realtors would turn a big profit by selling the same houses to African Americans and other minorities as they moved into that neighborhood. 

Chapter Six:  The Year in El Paso

(I bless Naná, the matriarch of the Rodriguez family.)

My first assignment as a Jesuit priest in 1967 was at Our Lady’s Youth Center that was under the direction of Father Richard Thomas, S. J.  I had no idea what an adventure that was going to turn into.  The old Knights of Columbus building, which had been taken over by Father Harold Rahm, S.J., a few years earlier, still had a lot of trash that had to be cleaned up.  One of my tasks was to throw out the trash.  I was taking out trash late one evening when a well-dressed young man came up to me. He said, “Father, you’ve got to help me.  I’m a heroin addict.”  This was 1967 and El Paso did not have a methadone program.  “Call the police,” he said, “I’ll go to jail and do cold turkey.”  So, I called the police.  They came and said, “We can’t take him in.  He’s not in the act of committing a crime.”  The young man walked away very sad, and I felt helpless and discouraged.  I knew there would be many more such encounters in my priestly life.

But discouragement did not set in because I started working with the alumni from Bowie High School.  Father Thomas and I learned that several graduates wanted to attend college but did not know how to proceed or whether they could deal with college-level courses.  So, I put out the word to Jesuit Scholastics around the country and told them that I wanted to start a college prep program for these graduates to give them a taste of college classes before they decided to enroll in college.  The scholastics who came taught classes in English, math, and history.  These were 101 courses.  A couple of us worked as tutors.  Besides the classes, we arranged to visit the UTEP campus and introduced the students to the financial aid people at the University. 

Because we canvassed the neighborhood door to door, we were able to get 40 graduates, young men and women who had graduated from Bowie within the past 5 years.  Seventy percent of our students enrolled at UTEP for the fall semester.  Unfortunately, I was reassigned from El Paso to San Antonio for the following year, so I had no way to track those who enrolled to see whether they went beyond one year or one semester.  I often wish I could have expanded that program into two or three more years.

There were a couple of other programs that we developed for the Bowie students during my year in El Paso.  One was a Coffee House which allowed the students to come in and spend time visiting with each other, but also gave those who wished a chance to perform with poetry or song or humor. My brother Billy, pictured here, joined with two of the girls to perform folk songs as part of the entertainment.   The Coffee House became quite popular with the Bowie students.

A traveling choir of students was a by-product of the Coffee House. The traveling choir performed at nursing homes and hospitals and sang contemporary popular songs.  Because the songs were accompanied by humor and short personal visits to aging folks in nursing homes, we began to be invited to different places to perform. 

Another program was called The Insight Retreat.  Father Richard Thomas and I took 20 or so students on an overnight program of fun, prayer, and reflection at the Juan Diego Camp just outside of El Paso.  The program had a powerful impact on the students because it helped them reflect on their values and share their dreams.   It also had a powerful impact on me.  Especially the night that Rosie, a Senior at Bowie, who lived in “Chihuahuita,” the poorest neighborhood in El Paso, started crying in the middle of a discussion about God.  We all stopped and asked her, “Rosie, what is wrong?”  She said, “If God loves us so much, why are we so poor?”   I just swallowed hard and kept silent, and joined in her tears, as did the rest of the students.

Later that same night, when we returned to Our Lady’s Youth Center, I went to pitch some trash in the dumpster and heard some cries from within the dumpster.  I looked inside and found three street children from Juarez sleeping there.  Then, much to my sadness, I discovered that a number of those street children were sleeping on our two-story Sacred Heart rectory roof that was flat and could be easily climbed by pipes along the side of the building.   The next few days, I rounded up as many of these children as I could and took them over to an orphanage in Juarez, but they wouldn’t stay.  I allowed a few of them to sleep in my station wagon, but there seemed to be no solution.  Father Richard Thomas, S. J., who ran Our Lady’s Youth Center, announced to the children that they were welcome to come to the Center every afternoon at four o’clock, and that they would take showers and eat a meal of oatmeal and beans with something to drink.  We began with about a dozen children, but the number swelled to over eighty in just a couple of weeks.   It hurt me deeply that there was nothing more we could do for these street children, most of whom had been thrown out of their homes by their parents and told not to return unless they brought money.  Although these children became thieves by necessity, they never stole a single item from the Youth Center.

All during my time in El Paso, I walked the streets of the Second Ward and visited people in the tenements and said Masses there.  In the summer of 1968, I wrote an article called “Mexican Americans, the Invisible Minority” and sent it along with several graphic photographs of the poverty situation to the Ave Maria Magazine published out of Notre Dame University.  I never expected it to be published, much less to be the cover article in that national magazine.  I suppose I stepped on a few Catholic toes because I was summoned to the Chancery to explain why I had put the Catholic Church in a bad light in the article.  It appears that I gave too much credit to the work being done by the Protestant Churches in the Second Ward (a language School by the Lutherans, a health clinic by the Methodists, and food distribution by the Salvation Army).  When Father Bob Gafford, S. J., who was then pastor of Sacred Heart Church learned that I had been summoned to explain myself, he came as my defender.  At the Chancery Office, we were ushered into a boardroom.  Several of the priests sat behind tables while Bob and I sat in chairs facing them.  The Bishop (Sydney Metzger) was not present.  One of the priests said, “Don’t you think it was unfair of you to give so much credit to the Protestants and hardly mention what the Catholic Church is doing in the Second Ward?”  I replied that I thought I had pointed out the presence and work of Our Lady’s Youth Center and the work done by both Sacred Heart Church and St. Ignatius Church, which were the two Catholic Churches in that part of town.  At that point Father Gafford jumped in and questioned the questioners: “You promised to open a hospitality house five years ago.  Nothing yet, what happened?”  And he mentioned several other things promised and not fulfilled.  Then the presider said, “Let’s table this for discussion at a later time,” and we were dismissed.  But in those days, no reasons were given for decisions by bishops and superiors affecting us priests.  I was reassigned from El Paso to San Antonio.  Many years later, one of the diocesan priests told me that in fact I had been blackballed from the El Paso Diocese.

Chapter Seven: The San Antonio Years, March against Brutality

So, I arrived in San Antonio having had a shocking lesson on ecclesiastical politics and the dangers of taking the side of poor people even in the Church. 

Talk about ecclesiastical politics, my second day in San Antonio, Father Harry Martin, S. J., the pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, took me to a meeting of the San Antonio Priests’ Association.  There was only one item on the agenda: to call for Archbishop (Robert E.) Lucey’s resignation! (October 1968) This was a total surprise to me, but most of the priests present felt that the Archbishop had become dictatorial and arbitrary in dealing with the priests and should be asked to resign by the Pope.  A letter to the Pope was prepared and was signed by Father Martin and by many other priests present.  I refused to sign simply because I had not been present for the previous meetings at which all these things had been discussed.  But what a shocker, priests asking for the Archbishop’s resignation! In all my experience as a religious, I never expected to witness such a thing.  Eventually, the Holy Father did send a bishop from another diocese to investigate, and the outcome was the resignation of Archbishop Lucey.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Antonio was in a state of utter collapse.  I was named minister-treasurer of the parish, and that meant that I was to pay the bills.  The parish was deep in debt both with the Archdiocese and even with the suppliers of the basics:  utilities, milk for the school children, paper, and other supplies. In the first few months, I spent more time dealing with bill collectors than with parishioners.  It took a lot of begging and negotiating over a four-year period before the parish got out of debt.

My first three funerals were vendetta murders.  People who lived next door to each other got into a fight and a young man was killed.  The next thing, one of the young men from the other family was killed as well.  Then back to the first family, another man was killed and another funeral.  The feud between those families finally stopped because one family managed to burn down the house of the other family.  For me it was depressing and discouraging.  There were days when it seemed like the problems were just too overwhelming and I wondered whether I was up to the task.  But the Lord wanted me to be there and gave me the grace to hold on during those first few months.  Much to my surprise, I was appointed administrator within a year, then pastor a year later.

This picture is a scene from a protest play enacted by a Chicano Drama company that I helped to sponsor. Some exciting things began to happen.  I got a call from Attorney Ruben Sandoval, who asked if some Hispanic leaders could have a meeting in our parish hall.  The issue to be talked about was that of police brutality.  I thought it was a good way of getting in the know about what was happening out in the community, so I agreed.  The meeting included attorneys, labor leaders, clergy, college students, Brown Berets, and many others.  The attorneys reported that in the past ten months, ten Mexican American young men had been shot, many in the back, by police, and that there was a pattern of beatings of several others.  The West and Southside communities were seething with anger, and there was a danger that without some safety valve, San Antonio could experience the kinds of riots that had plagued other major cities around the United States.   It was around that time that the Wall Street Journal had an article stating that San Antonio was ripe for a major upheaval. 

The result of that meeting was a very carefully planned “March Against Police Brutality” that was to start at Our Lady of the Lake University and end downtown at the Alamo.  The attorneys worked to get all the requisite permissions to have the march go on the most direct route from the University to the Alamo.  Meantime, some of us, including myself, went and visited with the police chief to identify for him the police officers that we asked to be taken off the street because of their tactics and reputations.   The police chief knew well what was happening, but he had to keep up the morale of the whole department. It was not easy for him to act without feeling pressure from the community, and he told us as much.  It was then that the chief gave me his private number so that I could call him at any time that I felt he should know what was happening in the community.

The March, started with some 1200 participants, who included college students, Catholic and Protestant clergy, community activists, and members of families of the victims of the “police brutality” as well as many other individuals and groups.  The March started off peacefully and orderly enough, but there was a moment when I thought we were about to witness a disaster.  Father James “Hooty” McCown, S. J., and I were toward the front of the March.  As it happened the most direct route for the March made it pass right on the side of the County Jail.  As we came in view of the jail, two officers were roughing up a young Mexican American in plain view of everyone.  As the marchers saw this, they surged toward the chain link fence and toward the police.  Almost without thinking, Father Hooty and I put our backs to the fence and started pushing the surging crowd forward and the momentum of the marchers carried them forward away from the fence.  We don’t know what might have happened if the marchers had torn down the fence and tried to attack the police.  After that very dangerous moment, the March continued in an orderly manner.

The March had its desired effect.  Several officers were taken off street duty and placed on desk duty.  Tensions in the community lessened and the activists went on to other issues.

Chapter Eight: The San Antonio Years, The Formation of P.A.D.R.E.S. and MACC

 Early in my time in San Antonio, Father Ralph Ruiz, a diocesan priest–in charge of the Archdiocesan Inner-City Apostolate located in a house within Guadalupe Parish–called to invite me to come to a meeting with a few other priests, all working in the poverty-stricken Westside of San Antonio.  All of us were quite alarmed at the tremendous poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, illness, and misery among Mexican Americans in that part of the City.  The focus was to ask ourselves: What could we as priests do about such a situation?   Is it enough simply to provide Mass and Sacraments to the people in such dire straits?  One of our predecessors, Father Carmelo Tranchese, S. J., who became pastor of Guadalupe Parish during the great Depression of the 1930’s, had single-handedly fought to bring government money to provide safe and sanitary housing where before there had been nothing but hovels.  But by the 1970’s, times had changed; one priest probably would be able to do very little to change conditions.  So, the group decided to form itself into a working group to discuss and plan how to expose what had long been hidden to the eyes of the wider public, namely, the miserable conditions of the people of the Westside. 

The group called itself P.A.D.R.E.S. (Padres Asociados para Derechos Religiosos Educationales y Sociales).  Somehow word got out that some priests in San Antonio had formed a group to fight for poor people’s rights, so that at our next meeting, priests from Denver and Houston attended. (1969) That expanded group decided that it might be worthwhile to call a national meeting of priests working in similar circumstances, those who were ministering to the Hispanic poor.  For the sake of organization, Father Ruiz was elected president, and I was elected vice president.   We, the PADRES, traveled to Washington, D. C., to pressure the American Catholic Bishops to provide at least one bishop from our Hispanic heritage for the Church.  The result was the appointment of Bishop Patricio Fernandez Flores. (He was ordained as Auxiliary Bishop of San Antonio on Cinco de Mayo 1970, and is pictured here.)

In the early days, one of my tasks was to travel to New Mexico to recruit priests to become members of P.A.D.R.E.S.  The priests in New Mexico were a tough bunch to recruit, since they did not, did not like to call themselves either Mexican American or Chicanos, but only Hispanic or Españoles. Interestingly, the New Mexican priests eventually became the most loyal and fiercest members of P.A.D.R.E.S.

I also went to Coachella Valley, California, to participate in the migrant workers’ strike against the grape growers.  That’s where I met Cesar Chavez, the great organizer who led a successful boycott that earned the migrant farm workers the right to organize and to bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Articles and books have been written on the whole history of P.A.D.R.E.S., so it is not my intention to develop this part of the story any further.  You will find a bit more about P.A.D.R.E.S. in Appendix Four.

MACC (The Mexican American Cultural Center). A member of PADRES, Father Virgilio Elizondo, pushed the idea of starting an institute to do research on Hispanic ministry, provide language skills for those who would be working among Hispanics or in Latin America, and to help grassroots people develop leadership skills.  It was my task to develop the leadership development program.  I became part of a mobile team that traveled around the country conducting workshops in various communities.  The workshops were successful in getting people politically involved in their towns, Hispanics, mostly Mexican Americans but also Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, who had never had any political power at all. 

Another time, wearing a coat and tie, I came into another small town and parked behind a small federal building that was across the street from the City Hall.  I walked through the federal building and out the front door and across the street to the City Hall.  I went to the receptionist and said, “Miss, I’m here to find out what the City has done with the federal HUD grant which it got last year.”  She immediately got up and went and got a lady who came out and asked me why I wanted to see the books.  Notice, I had not asked to see the books.  “I am making a study of how that money was spent,” I said.  So, the second lady went to the back and out came back with a gentleman carrying a ledger.  He opened the ledger and showed me where there was a single entry made out to the water company.  I said, “Wasn’t this grant supposed to be to provide housing for the poor?” I asked.  “Well, we felt that improving our water system would help the poor and everyone else,” he explained.  I didn’t say anything else.  I just closed the ledger and walked out and crossed the street back into the federal building.  As I went in, I looked back across the street and saw six or seven people looking at me out the windows of the City Hall.  My thought as I got into my car was, “I better be careful.  I could get shot.”

Chapter Nine: The San Antonio Years, Beginning of C.O.P.S.

(I pose here with Mayor Lila Cockrell and Councilman Henry Cisneros of San Antonio.)

C.O.P.S. (Communities Organized for Public Service).   Ernie Cortes was a brilliant young man who had graduated from Texas A. and M. and took a job with the Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC) as an economic development specialist.  In the early ‘70’s, Ernie saw the same poverty and miserable conditions in Westside San Antonio that I was seeing.  Ernie decided that economic development was going to take forever, so he decided to go up to Chicago to get training with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in community organizing.  The IAF assigned him to do organizing in East Chicago, IL, but Ernie wanted to organize in San Antonio.  So, one night I got a call from Ernie at Guadalupe.  He wanted to meet with me.   So, we met, and he explained the process of community organizing to me.  I’d heard several young activists explain their versions of organizing the community to me and this was the first time I felt that here was someone who really knew what he was talking about.  He asked me to take the role of Chairman of the Organizing Committee and I accepted. 

It became my task to put together an ecumenical committee of Church people and others who could help us get funding to hire an organizer full-time and set up an office for him.  So, I contacted my friends in the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Methodist Church.  Ernie already had a connection with the Church of Christ that was providing some funding for him.  Eventually, our committee managed to put $30,000 together by making sure that each bishop and judicatory leader understood that they were putting money along with other church leaders.  It also helped that the IAF had some successes in places like Chicago and Rochester, NY.  Eventually, we managed to get a nice grant from the Bishops’ Campaign for Human Development. 

It was said that one of the Churches had invested $100,000 into an organizing effort in San Antonio that went nowhere because the “organizers” had tried to work with men and women in bars.  Nothing ever came of that.  Our organization took a completely different approach.   We targeted citizens who owned property, had good jobs, and especially were concerned about their children.  Ernie interviewed about 1,000 people before we pulled together small meetings and then a large meeting where the agenda was put together from the issues that the people had brought up in their interviews.  At first, the group wanted to name itself The Committee for Mexican American Affairs, or something like that, but the idea of naming itself C.O.P.S., Communities Organized for Public Service, won out because the correlative of C.O.P.S. is ROBBERS, referring to the people who were milking the Westside dry.

C.O.P.S. has become one of the most successful community organizations in the nation.  Why did it succeed at the beginning?  The weather helped.  San Antonio gets torrential rains that caused flooding in the Southside, and the City Government was doing nothing about it.  Many houses on the Southside would have water coming into their homes, and carpeting or tiles would have to ripped out at the owner’s expense.  The City had passed more than one bond issue to relieve the flooding on the Southside, but nothing had ever been done.  Why?  Because the City Council, that had been taken over by developers, had loaned bond money to developers to provide the infrastructure for housing developments on the Northside—the much more    The arrangement was legal because the bond money was provided as “a loan” to be paid back at some unspecified future time.  C.O.P.S. brought this arrangement to light. When it became known through newspaper reports what was happening, the Southside residents became a hornet’s nest.  

The C.O.P.S. organizers who had been canvassing and interviewing homeowners in the West and South sides convinced many of them that they would not be able to do much individually.  However, together in a well-organized manner, they could bring around the City Council, the City manager, and the Mayor to do the right thing.  C.O.P.S. provided excellent training so that ordinary people who had no experience in public speaking could address officials with both cogent arguments and passion. 

Because of the excellent organizational skills of Ernie Cortes, the ecumenical support of the Churches, and the circumstances created by the weather and the neglect of the City Council, C.O.P.S. became a formidable organization from beginning.  I became one of the clergy leaders and eventually served on the Mayor’s Charter Revision Committee that changed the way the City Council was elected.  From elections at large that favored big money candidates like the developers, the City went to elections by districts, so that every part of the City–wealthy or poor–had a voice in making policy decisions.  It was a radical change for a city that had been governed for decades by a small group of powerful citizens. 

The effect on the people of the Westside and the Southside and the near Eastside was that they began to form a new image of themselves, an image of having a voice where before they had none, an image of being doers where before they felt helpless, an image of having power where before they felt powerless.  The most important achievement of C.O.P.S. was not getting the Mayor and City Council to address the flooding but giving the minorities and the neglected parts of the City a voice—thus empowering those who before were marginalized.  That’s why C.O.P.S. became such a model for other Cities to emulate.

Chapter Ten: The San Antonio Years, Don Pedro Arrupe Arrives

(Father General Pedro Arrupe is greeted in San Antonio by Father Ricardo Ramirez, president of MACC and later Bishop of Las Cruces.)

A historic first for our parish was the visit of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe.  Don Pedro, as we Jesuits called him, who has since his death in 1991 earned veneration as a modern-day saint, was making a tour of the New Orleans Jesuit Province and one of his stops was Guadalupe Parish.  I remember now that my first thoughts were:  why should such an exalted person visit our humble parish?  It was in the late 1970’s that he came.  By that time, he had a world-wide reputation as a promoter of faith doing justice and as a man who did not shun controversy.  He was known for defending Jesuits in Central and South America, India, Indonesia, Africa, and other places, Jesuits who were vigorously defending the poor against those who were exploiting them.  Don Pedro was not only getting heat from secular powers but from ecclesiastical powers as well.  But Don Pedro, a man ever loyal to the Church he loved and faithful to Jesus to whom he had committed his life, did not back down if he felt the controversial Jesuits were doing the right thing. 

Jesuits from Houston and El Paso came to San Antonio to meet with Don Pedro.  We crowded into the rectory dining room and listened to Don Pedro regale us with stories about his young days as a Jesuit in the United States.  Young Father Arrupe had made his Tertianship year in New York.  Part of his assignments was to visit the prisoners at the Riker’s Island [New York City’s largest prison in the Bronx].  That was something that he still remembered vividly. Then he said something that startled me.  He had been sent to San Antonio, TX, to Guadalupe Parish, in preparation for an excursion into Mexico as the Spanish Government had requested him to do.   He also mentioned that he had baptized some babies while at Guadalupe Parish.  Wow!  As soon as I could, I went to our Baptismal Register to see if his name was there.  Sure enough, his signature was there, the same as the signature of his letters to the members of the Society of Jesus.  I immediately called a few parishioners and the word got out through the networks that had been built up through C.O.P.S.   We had a Mass the next day which he celebrated, and it was clear that the parishioners where quite excited to be with this famous priest who had been, if only for a very short time, a member of the parish staff.

So, what was his trip into Mexico about?  That trip was dangerous because it was precisely at the time when the Mexican government was persecuting the Catholic Church and had expelled many priests, religious brothers, and women religious, and even killed a number.  It was the time of the Blessed martyr Father Miguel Pro, S. J., who when he was shot, yelled out, “Viva Cristo Rey!”  A Mexican government photographer took the famous photo of Father Pro with arms outstretched in the form of a cross and another right after he was shot, slumped to the ground. 

Don Pedro had been asked by the Spanish government to go check on the condition of Spanish orphans of the Spanish Civil War who had been sent to Mexico for their safety.  Don Pedro could not travel into Mexico as a priest.  He traveled as a layman, passing himself off as a student of a “leftist” Spanish professor.  Apparently, the Mexican government never discovered his real identity.  I wonder if anyone in Mexico ever discovered that the hospitality they offered to that “student” was in effect to a Jesuit priest who would be become almost as famed as the martyred Miguel Pro.

After the conversations with the Jesuits, Father Provincial of the New Orleans Province, Thomas J. Stahel, S. J., who had worked as an editor of America Magazine, asked if a couple of us could prep Father General for a press conference he would be having the next day.  What questions was he likely to be asked from San Antonio press, radio, and television reporters?  For an hour and a half, we posed questions about controversial Jesuits in Nicaragua, Brazil, the United States, and other places.  We also asked whether the documents of the 32^nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus were tinged with socialism.  He answered all questions directly and tactfully. 

The next afternoon, we took him to the Mexican American Cultural Center where Father Virgilio Elizondo, the founder of the Center, and Father Ricardo Ramirez, president, had arranged to have a special dinner for him, inviting prominent people from the City of San Antonio.  Interestingly, several Army and Air Force generals showed up for the event.  I was a bit puzzled and asked Virgilio the reason generals were invited to come.  “Oh,” Virgilio said, “the generals are here to honor the General of the Jesuits.  Generals honor a General.” 

Then we went to a conference room filled with microphones and reporters.  The press conference lasted about 45 minutes.  I was deeply disappointed because of all the preparation questions we had posed the night before, not one reporter asked anything even slightly controversial.  I think Don Pedro was disappointed also.  He did manage to give a plug both for the work of M.A.C.C. and the efforts of C.O.P.S.

Chapter Eleven: The San Antonio Years, This and That

In this section I want mostly to relate interesting tidbits that come to mind. 

I was driven to San Antonio from El Paso by Gene and Josephine Ross, accompanied by their children.  It was a noisy but fun trip.  When they saw where I was going, that is, the Church on El Paso Street, they said, “Are you sure you want to stay here?  This looks like a pretty tough neighborhood.”  And of course, it was a tough neighborhood as I was to discover soon enough.

After I’d been at Guadalupe Parish for a few months, one of the ladies who was a strong leader in the parish said to me, “Be aware that we call this parish COMEPARRACOS (devourer of pastors).”  I inquired why the people called it that, and she told me that several of my predecessors had either died early in their tenure or were so stressed that they had to be sent somewhere else.  The lady wondered aloud how long I would last!  Some years later, she asked me how come I was still sane with all the money and personnel worries.  I told her “What?  Me worry?  Never!”  She didn’t know what to do with that!

Summer programs.  Most summers at Guadalupe, we held programs for the children of the barrio.  Usually, at the end of the summer we had the children put on a stage presentation for their families and friends.  One presentation had to do with kids dressed up as trees and flowers and a rock who talked to a knight.  The 8-year-old who was supposed to be the knight was being put into his suit of cardboard armor when he suddenly said he had to go to the bathroom.  So, the counselors took off his armor and he ran to the bathroom.  Meanwhile the cameras from one of the TV channels appeared and started filming the audience and waiting for the curtain to open.  The boy came back and started being dressed again.  Then he had to go to the bathroom again.  So, he ran out.  Now the audience was getting restless, so one of the counselors went out and told the audience what was happening backstage.  They started laughing.  Meanwhile the boy came back and was costumed again.  Now it was time for him to get on stage, but he embraced a post and started crying.  Stage fright had a hold of him.  Just then his cousin, a 9-year-old, came over and said: “I know all his lines.  I’ll do it.”  So, the counselors started to remove the armor suit to put it on his cousin.  But the knight let go of the post and ran on stage, tears streaming down his face.  The curtains opened, the play, which lasted 7 minutes, was presented with the knight doing his lines between sobs, the audience in stitches and the TV cameras rolling.  It was a most memorable end to a summer program.

There is a coda to this story.  Twelve years later, I officiated at this young man’s wedding.  His cousin was the best man.  I asked his permission to tell the reluctant knight’s story, but he asked me to please not to do it.  So, I’ve saved this story until now.

Some of the counselors were high school students who came from the neighborhood and some who had known me in El Paso.  One who came from Arizona was my nephew Michael Marquez, a teenager filled with the desire for adventure.  He was of great help for the summer program, but he caused me a bit of worry.  I told him that we were in a very rough neighborhood and to please stay on the main streets when he went out.  I suppose I should not have said that, because one day he decided to go downtown and took a short cut through the housing projects.  Some neighborhood teenagers surrounded him because he was intruding into their territory.  Happily, one of them said: “Hey, man, this guy works over at the church.  Leave him be.”  We at the church had a good relationship with the toughs of the neighborhood, so we got Michael back a little scared but in one piece. 

 The Guadalupanas were a group of grand ladies.  They raised money in many ways.  Of course, they kept their own books and I had to come to them hat in hand to ask for money when I needed it.  But they were aging, and no new women had joined in a long time.  So, they asked me to try to recruit some younger women if possible.  So, I worked on it and got five younger women to join.  There was a nice induction ceremony, and everyone seemed happy.  Three months later, two of the new members came to see me and said, “We’re quitting the Guadalupanas.”  “Why,” I asked.  “Because every time we suggest something, they say, ‘We have our own way of doing things.  Just do what we tell you.’”  So, all my efforts at recruiting new members went down the drain.  I was so mad I went to the next Guadalupana meeting and torn into them.  Do you think they were contrite?  Not at all!

I want to tell another story, a lesson I learned about courage.   One night, the parish held a summer festival at a park in the middle the public housing complex.  A couple of the Oblate seminarians came to help us run a booth.  While we were there, a couple of tough guys came by and tried to create a confrontation with one of the seminarians.  The security officer noticed what was going on and made the tough guys move on.  But about an hour later someone yelled, “Look!  There’s a man coming at us holding a gun!”  Many of the children started to run right toward the man with the gun in his hand.  This of course was the worst thing that could happen.  One or more of these kids could be shot and killed. Several others and I ducked behind a brick wall in front of the social center, and then I ran into the center and called the police. 

Meantime, our church janitor, the father of nine children, ran straight at the gunman, got shot in the arm, but disarmed him.  Then the janitor simply sat on top of that tough, who was on drugs, until the police came and took him away.  His spontaneous, courageous action surely saved the lives of some children.

I have never forgotten that incident.  Why?  Because it taught me that I, who had no children, reacted in fear to preserve myself, while the janitor, who had nine children, reacted courageously, and saved lives.  His name was Manuel Hurón and I’ll never forget him.

When Pope John Paul II came to San Antonio, I was in New Orleans, but I was asked to go to San Antonio to present a painting done by prisoners of the Bexar County Jail.   The painting was of the churches of the Six-Parish Coalition that I had started when I was in San Antonio.  In the painting, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and of the Pope hovered above the churches as though to bless them and protect them.  So, I–along with other parishioners– made the presentation to His Holiness.  The Pope’s visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe was not in the church building, but at a plaza in front of the church.  The security was tight.  When the Holy Father finished his talk, the secret service agents led him out stage left, but a woman from Guatemala called to him and he wheeled around and went to her on the opposite side of the stage.  For a moment, the agents lost the Pope!  The woman told him the story of her coming to the United States by freight train and how she lost one of her legs jumping off the train.  A news camera was right there filming that little aside and I ended up translating for them.

(One of several despedidas from San Antonio.  Mariachis were part of my life there, and I learned to sing with them.)

My time in San Antonio was a rich, difficult, humanizing time.  While I was not sorry to be assigned elsewhere after 12 years, I would never have exchanged my days in San Antonio for time anywhere else.

                        Deacon Carlos

Sandoval pictured here with me and his wife Antonia in 1983.  He had just celebrated 25 years as a permanent deacon.

“Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!  Viva!

Chapter Twelve:  The New Orleans Years, Pastoral Assistant to the Provincial

(A Mass with children in one of the Jesuit Parishes.)

After 12 years in San Antonio, I began to feel the need for a change.  I thought I was beginning to repeat myself and attracting no new people into the ministries of the Church.  I mentioned this to the then Pastoral Assistant to the Provincial, Father Marty Elsner.  It was a mistake.  He wanted very much to get out of his job as Pastoral Assistant and so he engineered to take my job in San Antonio and to get the Provincial to put me in his job.  So, in August of 1980, I loaded up my small pickup truck with my “chivas” (stuff) and drove to New Orleans.

I arrived in New Orleans on a Sunday afternoon.  There was no one in the Provincial House except Father Harry Martin, S. J., who had just returned from Brazil.  Father Martin had been pastor of Guadalupe in San Antonio immediately before me.  So, Harry let me in and then suggested that we go to the Walgreen’s a few blocks away to pick up some small items.   While we were in the drug store, some robbers held it up!  As the robbers ran out, the clerk that was held up started screaming, and a plain clothes policeman who was in the store drew his gun and started after the robber.  But robbers got away in a car waiting outside.  I said to myself, “Wow! I thought San Antonio was dangerous, but New Orleans….”

My job in New Orleans was to be Assistant to the Provincial Superior, Father Tom Stahel, S. J., for the International and Pastoral Apostolate.  Part of my job was to visit the Jesuits who work in parishes and retreat houses.  Another aspect was also to look after the men who were assigned to the International Apostolate (the foreign missions). 

So, I started traveling: first to different places around the Southern and Southwestern United States.  One of our men was stationed at that time in Tennessee.  I went to spend a couple of days with him, and he invited me to go with him to celebrate Mass for a small Irish community in the hills.  The little church could not have held more than 100 people.  I noticed that the walls of the church were made of cement and about 18 inches thick.  I asked one of the men walking out of the church to explain the massive walls to me.  “Are they so constructed for insulation?” I asked.  “No, father,” he said, “after the Ku Klux Klan burned us down twice trying to drive us out, we decided that the next time they would only damage the roof.  But they’ve never come back.”  I knew how the Klan reacted to African Americans and Jews, but this was the first time it really came home to me how much the Klan hated not only African Americans but Catholics as well. 

Several other interesting places that I visited were in New Mexico.  I stayed at our parish, Immaculate Conception Church in Albuquerque, but visited places like Wagon Mound where Father Joseph Malloy, S. J., was pastor.   I also visited a small church near Las Cruces where Father F. X. Donahue, S. J., was pastor.  That church had a perfect view of the Organ Mountains through a picture window behind the altar.  I remember thinking that if I ever got a chance to build a church, I would look for a site like this one and construct the building so that the beauty of nature could be revealed as part of the worship experience.  Another place I visited was Cuba, N. M.  Father Pierre Landry, S. J., was an associate pastor at ICC in Albuquerque.  He offered to drive me to Cuba to a trailer that the Jesuits used as a villa on their days off.  It was winter.  There was snow on the ground.   Father Landry took me up the mountain on a narrow lumbering road.  All I could do was keep my eyes on the steep drop on our left, and hope that no lumber truck would come barreling down upon us.  It was a harrowing experience.  I never told Pierre that, neither did he ever again invite me to come with him to the villa!

Chapter Thirteen:  The New Orleans Years, International Assistant to the Provincial

(See me against this gigantic tree in Brazil)

Then it was time to travel to South America to see how our missionaries were doing.  Our province has always been very careful to keep a close connection with those who represent us in mission territory.  My first trip was to Brazil.  I landed in Rio de Janiero, somewhat confused as to how to get to Sao Paolo, my ultimate destination.  I saw a plane about to leave for Sao Paolo, so I jumped on it.  When I arrived, no one in Sao Paolo to greet me. I went to the phone bank and discovered that one had to purchase “fichas” or tokens to make phone calls.  I noticed a place selling such fichas and I managed to buy a few.  I called the numbers I had but got nothing besides a message in Portuguese that I did not understand.  The kind lady who had sold me the fichas noticed my distress and came over.  I spoke Spanish slowly and she answered in Portuguese, and so she dialed the numbers I gave her.  Then my blood ran cold as she said: these numbers are discontinued.  However, she got new numbers and dialed one of those.  To my relief, someone answered.  It was the cook at the church in Osasco.  When I gave my name, she got very excited and started speaking so rapidly that I understood nothing.  I hung up.  I asked myself, now what do I do?  I thought of getting back on a plane to Rio and then to Miami.  What a mess!

Then I noticed a sign that said in English: “PAGING”.  I went there.  I did not know who might be expecting me, so I decided to page myself!  The man in the booth asked me, “Sir, do you want me to page both airports?”  I was at the wrong airport.  I had taken a domestic flight from Rio and landed at the domestic rather than the international airport in Sao Paolo.  After a time, I heard someone say to the man in the booth, “I too am looking for Edmundo Rodriguez.”  It was Father Jack Vessels, S. J.  “I’m here to pick you up,” he said.  I could have kissed him.

(A visit with Jesuits in Brazil and Paraguay.)

Little did I know that my first trip to mission country would portent many other adventures of a similar kind. 

Of course, my travel to Brazil was not for vacation but to see the work that our Jesuits were doing down there and to have the province office assist in any way we could. One of the Jesuits I visited with was Louie Diaz who belonged to the California Province.  His work was with the people of the favelas, the barrio with makeshift houses made from leftover lumber, cardboard, and other materials in an area that had no sewerage services and only an occasional spigot of water for the residents to use.  And what did Louie do in such dire circumstances to bring the Gospel to such desperately poor people?  He held house parties.  He would have someone bake cookies and someone else provide lemonade.  Then he would have neighbors come together and sing some popular songs and he would say a few words of comfort.  The people reacted very well since it was a positive way of getting together for a bit of enjoyment.  Then on Saturday or Sunday he would say Mass in a nearby chapel and many of the neighbors would attend.  I thought his idea of bringing the Gospel to people by partying was a marvelous idea, and it seemed to work.

Brothers Tony Coco and Bob Hollingsworth ran the Kennedy Center in Campinas.  The Center had been started by Father Harold Rahm, but the Brothers continued to train people in computer literacy, electricity, printing press usage, typing and other skills which help them find moderately paying jobs.  One thing that amazed me was that part of the Center building was used for schooling.  The children came in three shifts, early morning, till about noon, then from noon to 6:00 p.m. and then from 6:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m.  The number of students is so large that schools must operate in this fashion otherwise they could not possibly accept all the students who come. 

The Brothers had developed good relations with the city leaders and so they received support from them.  Brother Hollingsworth was especially skilled in political negotiations.  I help a bit by bringing IBM Selectric heads from the United States and smuggling them into Brazil because the government forbad their entry from outside.  But the problem was that such items were enormously costly there in Brazil and often did not work very well.  I also brought thousands of dollars in greenbacks to help them fight inflation that was out of control in Brazil during the 80’s.  My coat pockets were lined with 100 and 20 dollar-bills as I boarded the airplane in Miami.  This was obviously long before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington that saw a great tightening of security procedures. 

Another of the Jesuits doing great work in Brazil was Father Harold Rahm.  Father Rahm was very instrumental in my joining the Jesuits when he was in El Paso in the late 1940’s and early 50’s as I have already mentioned in Chapter 2.  Father Rahm decided to set up several “The Lord’s Ranches” in Brazil where he took in young men addicted to drugs and tried to rehabilitate them.  I was impressed that he used the old Jesuit novitiate Training Schedule as the model for this work.  The young men would be awakened by 5:00 a.m., gather for prayer at 5:30 a.m., then work in the vegetable fields until 8:00 a.m. and come in for breakfast.  Then from 9:30 until noon, they would participate in lectures, group therapy, and other such events.  Then there would be a period of siesta and more fieldwork or other work in the afternoon.  The evenings would be filled with some entertainment, more prayer, and a restful sleep.  The “novitiate” process seemed to work for many of the young addicts, and Father Rahm won national recognition for his work.  I enjoyed visiting the ranches with him.

One of the most amazing Jesuit works in all of Brazil is that of Father Edward Dougherty, S. J.  He has set up a television and radio network that broadcasts all over Brazil.  His intent is not only to evangelize the people of that country, but also to counteract the influence of Candomblé.  This is one of the Afro religions that combines both elements of the original slave religion with aspects of Christianity.  The programs that the Jesuit network sends out over the airwaves seem to be having a good effect.  Father Dougherty has gotten a lot of help from people in the United States for his work, even from Protestant sources.

Brazil is a beautiful country, and nothing is more spectacular than the Iguazu Falls.  Look:

Chapter Fourteen:  The New Orleans Years, Men to Paraguay

My role as Assistant for the International Apostolate also took me to Paraguay and Argentina.   In 1968, General [Alfredo Stroessner] ruled Paraguay, and the Church, including some Jesuits, began to protest some of the human rights abuses of his regime.  The upshot was that four European Jesuits were expelled from the country.  Then toward the end of the 1970’s, there were some problems in the diocesan seminary such that the bishops of the country asked the Jesuits to take over the teaching duties there.  So, the Jesuits left other apostolates that they were tending to respond to the request of the bishops. 

It was then that Pope John Paul II asked Father General Pedro Arrupe to send other Jesuits to fill those slots left vacant by the Jesuits of Paraguay.  Father Arrupe then asked our New Orleans Province to send men to Paraguay.  When I took over as Assistant for the International Apostolate, we sent four men, Don Bahlinger, Charlie Thibodeaux, Frank Renfroe, and C. J. McNaspy, to work in Paraguay.  I went to visit them just as they were settling into their new jobs.

Don, who had been working in El Salvador, immediately embarked in the dangerous work of organizing the peasant farmers into cooperatives.  The farmers had been going through brokers who kept a good deal of the profit, leaving very little for the farmers themselves.  By organizing a cooperative, the farmers would have a much larger share of the sales of their crops.  The enterprise was dangerous because there were many interested parties who like things the way they were, including people in the Paraguayan military. 

The military personnel in charge of San Ignacio, the town where Father Bahlinger was stationed, decided to harass him so he would quit.  They figured that it would be counterproductive to put in jail or expel an American, so instead they arrested a 70-year-old grandmother who was one of the catechism teachers in his parish for “holding a public meeting without proper permission.”  There was a law against holding public meetings without the permission of the local commandant.  What kind of meeting was this grandmother holding?  She was preparing 7-year-olds for their First Holy Communion.  She was held by the military for about three days, causing Father Bahlinger much grief.  That was, of course, the military’s purpose in the arrest.  But he continued his work courageously.

Father Frank Renfroe, S. J., another one of our missionaries, moved from Paraguay to Argentina.  He took over a church which was middle class but whose territory included a very poor rural community.  He found that there were many malnourished children there and that there was no potable water except a quarter mile away.  The residents of that place had to walk with their pails each day to bring drinking water every day.  

Father Renfroe responded to this situation by engaging volunteers from his parish.  They knew how to convert soybean flower into milk, hamburgers, and other nutritious foods, and they began a daily feeding program for the children.  I could see the improvement in the children during my second visit there.  He also tapped benefactors in the United States and had them send money to dig a well deep enough to find potable water right there in the middle of the village.  There was a big celebration when the water came gushing out of the single spigot from which the villagers could fill their buckets! 

It happened that my second visit to Frank Renfroe resulted in my becoming an “undocumented alien” in Argentina.  Frank and I met at Foz Iguazu, where the impressive Iguazu Waterfalls are located and where they required no visas to cross from Paraguay to Argentina.  If you have seen the movie “The Mission” with Robert De Niro, you’ve seen the Falls.   To travel into Argentina to be with Frank, I had to move to the interior to where visas were required.  I went to a ferry to cross the Parana River back to Paraguay and an Argentine naval officer told me I could not board because I had no visa to enter Argentina.  This was during the time of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict between Argentina and England in which the United States had taken the side of the British.  The officer was probably unhappy not only because I had no visa, but because I had an American passport.  He finally relented and allowed me to board the ferry. 

When I got to the Paraguayan side, the immigration official said to me: “You do not have an exit visa from Argentina, so you cannot enter Paraguay.”  I thought to myself?  What am I supposed to do?  Return to Argentina?  But I said, “Sir, how much would it cost me to get an exit visa from Argentina?”  Without hesitation, he said, “Veinte dolares.”  So I pulled out twenty dollars from my wallet and he put some sort of stamp on my passport and let me through.  As I continued, I thought to myself, “Thank God for a bit of corruption.”

My travels were sometimes a bit precarious.  I went in 1981 to Rome to visit Father Charlie O’Neil, S. J., who was director of the Jesuit Historical Institute.  It was an interesting visit, but the hair-raising part of the visit was our driving to the Rome airport.  As we went around a bend in the road, four armed men jumped out in front of us and pointed Uzis right at our heads.  They inquired who we might be and why we were on our way to the airport.  Charlie said, “Let’s not make any sudden moves.”  We didn’t and they let us through.  It so happened that on that very day, members of the German Red Brigade in Rome had released a certain Judge Giovanni D’Urso, whom they had kidnapped several months earlier.  The Red Brigade was a terrorist group who had killed Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.   Their demand in kidnapping Judge D’Urso, who was head of the Maximum-Security Prison in Italy, was to try to free some of their members from prison.  When we were stopped, the Brigade members were then trying to escape from Italy.   As far as I could determine, they were never caught.

Below is a photo of Father Bob McCown, S. J., on the terrace of the Pontifical University in Rio.  I got to the University on a Sunday and Bob was the only Jesuit who seemed to be around.  The doorbell rang, and we went to see who it was.  It was a man from a funeral home who said he had come to pick up the body of a Jesuit who had died during the night.  The priest was an aged Italian Jesuit who was retired there at the University.  Bob knew the man lived up on the fourth floor, so we went up there and sure enough, the man was laid out on his bed dressed in his cassock.  Now the task was to get this portly Jesuit down to the first floor so that the funeral home man could take him away.  The building had an elevator, but the box was so small that it was geared to carry only one person at a time.  So, we took the body to the elevator and stood him up.  Bob held him up and I went down the stairs to the first floor.  On the first floor, the three of us carried the man to the station wagon from the funeral home and off he was taken.  It was a kind of a bizarre experience.

Oh, Father Bob was teaching film making at the University. 

Chapter Fifteen: Provincial of the New Orleans Province, General Congregation 33

It was a most unexpected happening.  I assumed that I would only be in the provincial office for three years and then would be sent out to another apostolate.  It was to my surprise that my name was sent to Father Paolo Dezza.  When Father Arrupe suffered a stroke, Pope John Paul II named Father Dezza as delegate to the Society of Jesus to govern it in the Pope’s name.  It was Father Dezza who named me provincial superior of the New Orleans Province in 1983.  Most previous provincials had come out the academic world, that is, from the ranks of university professors and the like.  Having done parish work since my earliest years as a priest, I had no standing in the academic community at all.  Therefore, my being named as provincial was something of a shock to me.

Now it made sense why Father General Pedro Arrupe had asked me to come visit with him in Rome the year before.  Although the given reason was for me to give an account of our pastoral and international apostolates, the real reason seems to have been that he wanted to see if I would be up to the task of directing the province as superior.  Because I had met Father Arrupe during his earlier visits to the United States and knew of his stature as an advocate for faith and justice in the Church, I felt very honored to spend time in his presence in intimate conversation.  It was not long after that when he had a stroke that ended his tenure as our Father General.

Father Dezza, whom Pope John Paul II appointed as our leader following the disablement of Father Arrupe for complex reasons having to do with the fact that Jesuits were involved in the conflicts in Central America and with Liberation Theology in South America and other parts of the world, managed to convince the Pope that the Society of Jesus should call a General Congregation and return as quickly as possible to normalcy.  The General Congregation would receive Father Arrupe’s resignation and elect a new superior general.  The intervention by Pope John Paul II was a historic event that distressed many Jesuits and pleased some.

The intervention by the Pope was apparently based on his concern that some Jesuits were going overboard in their defense of the poor.  The Pope wanted to bring balance to our efforts on behalf of justice.  That he himself advocated justice for the poor is clear from his addresses when he visited Mexico.  Not withstanding the controversies, most Jesuits agreed with the spirit of the 32^nd General Congregation that stressed the need for justice to be part and parcel of the expression of Catholic faith. 

This followed the declaration of the 1971 Synod of Roman Catholic Bishops who declared, “Actions on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”

One of my first duties as provincial was to attend the 33^rrd General Congregation in Rome.  The General Congregation is made up of provincials and representatives of Jesuit provinces and vice-provinces throughout the world.  There were delegations from places like Japan, India, Africa, South and Central America, North America, Australia, and countries behind the Iron Curtain.  Those from behind the Iron Curtain, countries dominated by the Soviet Union, came to the Congregation with danger to themselves.  They had to do their apostolic work in secret and under threat of being arrested at any time.  Other Jesuits from Indonesia, India, Central America, and Cuba, for example, also worked under difficult, dangerous conditions.  I also met French worker-priests, that is, priests who worked in factories and related to ordinary workers, not as ritual priests but as fellow workers.

(Meeting Pope John Paul II at the General Congregation of the Jesuits in Rome.)

Only a couple of days after the General Congregation had started, I received word that my father had had a cerebral hemorrhage and died.  I immediately arranged to fly back to New York and thence to El Paso.  During the funeral I thought how providential it was that I had gone to visit mom and dad shortly before I left for Rome.  Because of the troubles in Europe, I had gone to visit them in case something might happen to me, not thinking something might happen to them.  I preached a homily but don’t remember much of what I said because tears were streaming from my eyes.  After the funeral, I returned to Rome and joined the other delegates in electing Father Peter Hans Kolvenhach as our new Superior General. 

As to the decrees of the Congregation, I had only a very small part in producing them.  One of the issues that came up was how we might state our belief that our Society, like the Church, should make “an option for the poor.”  This was a controversial issue for two reasons:  one was that some Jesuits from behind the Iron Curtain tended to read such language as “socialistic” in nature and it was precisely under socialistic regimes that they were suffering.  The other was that Jesuits engaged in high school and university education knew that most of their charges would come from middle class and well-to-do families and they did not want them to feel that Jesuits were now caring only for the poor.  There was in impasse.  I proposed a compromise: state the preferential option for the poor but also state that the work of the Society is not limited only to the poor.

 In some ways, the compromise was a dilution of what many in the Congregation would have preferred, but it was clear to me and to many others that no compromise would mean that a key statement supporting the work of General Congregation 32, which did put great emphasis on the work of social justice, would have been omitted.

One of the great Jesuits I met at the Congregation was Ignacio Ellacuria.  Ignacio was president of the University of Central America in El Salvador.  Ignacio was one of those movers and shakers passionate about bringing about a just peace in his war-torn country.  It was this kind of work which he was doing in 1989 when he and five other Jesuits were gunned down by members of the Salvadoran Army.  There were two laywomen employees of the Jesuit household who were killed as well, apparently to leave no witnesses behind.

Father Anthony De Mello, the great spiritual guru from India and author of several books on popular spirituality, was also a member of the Congregation.  He gave points for meditation every morning before breakfast.  I enjoyed his presentations, but little did I suspect that he would die of a heart attack just four years later in 1987.  It was my privilege during the 90’s to help Father Frank Stroudt, S. J., with De Mello retreats at Grand Coteau, LA.

At the end of the General Congregation there was a kind of talent show that was staged by the members.  I could not attend because I had become very sick and put in the infirmary of the Curia next to the room where Father Arrupe lived.  We were both under the care of a Spanish Jesuit Brother from Sevilla named Banderas.  Brother Banderas was very efficient and good humored, but I became seriously ill.  Brother Banderas had a doctor look in on me every day.  I experienced a high fever and even hallucinated.  One day Brother Banderas came in and said that if I did not get better soon, he would have to put me in a Roman hospital and that I wouldn’t like that.  By that time, I had begun to feel a little better, so I quickly arranged to fly back to the United States.  Back at home my doctor found an infection in my lung, so I had been suffering from some sort of pneumonia.

Some interesting things happened while I was in the infirmary.  Before I had become very sick, I went to visit Don Pedro [Arrupe] who understood several languages, but because of his stroke could speak only Spanish.  The Provincial of Japan, a native Japanese, came to visit him and spoke to Don Pedro in Japanese.  Then Don Pedro would answer in Spanish and I would translate to the Provincial into English, which he understood.  That went on for a while, until Don Pedro said to me in Spanish, “He wants me to go back to Japan with him, tell him he has to talk to my Superior!”  I explained to the Provincial that Don Pedro was tired and wanted to end the conversation. 

Later on I learned from some of my American compatriots that a group of Spaniards had presented a song at the “talent show” during which an enormous figure done with an open umbrella in a cassock, with a balloon as a head and a name tag with “RODRIGUEZ” appeared from the back of the group.  It was obviously an effort to draw some laughs at my expense, but none of the Spaniards would admit to it later.

Chapter Sixteen: Provincial of the New Orleans Province, The Trip to Sri Lanka

(Spring Hill College Jesuits with the Jesuit General Assistant for India, Parmananda Divarkar who came with me from Rome to the States.)

Back in the provincial office in New Orleans, I began the routine visitation of the various houses of the province.  This involved talking to individual Jesuits, often to encourage them, sometimes to admonish them, but always to be interested in their health, their work, and their spiritual state.  These visits with individuals were probably the most rewarding and edifying experiences for me during my time as provincial.  I got to know men of depth and goodness up close and personal.  Jesuits are often reluctant to broadcast their prayerful motivation for doing what they do.  What I found were men suffused with the love of God and who loved the people with whom they were working.  Every one of them, of us, I should say, have our shortcomings, but the overwhelming discovery for me was the genuine goodness that was under the surface.

The office of provincial involves more than what we in the Jesuits call “cura personalis,” that is, care of the individual.  It also involves the care of the apostolate.  My method to care for the latter, was to call together Jesuits who were working in a specific apostolate, for example, those working in retreat houses, or in parishes, or in schools, or in higher education, or in social ministry, so that they could know each other better and do some planning.  This may not seem like such an innovative idea, but the New Orleans Province is very spread out going from Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee in the East to New Mexico in the West.  That means that many men might not see each other for years, unless they were superiors.  Then the provincial would call them together for meetings twice a year.  But the other Jesuits who heard confessions, taught in the classroom, directed retreats, and worked with social justice groups, were rather isolated from the rest who were doing similar work. 

I’m a great believer in group-processes.  My philosophy is that if you bring good people together to get to know and trust each other and to plan together, there will be good results.  That had been my experience of the General Congregation; that had been my experience of the 1975 Call to Action Conference of the Catholic Bishops in Detroit where I was the writer of the preliminary paper on parish life and during which I chaired the section on Ethnicity and Race.  Then also my work with the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC), in conducting leadership development workshops around the country, convinced me that Jesuits could profit from something similar.

Looking back, I can see that the idea of these “Jesuit Convocations” as we called them was a mixed bag.   In some instances, they worked well; in others, Jesuits, who can be very individualistic, attended but found group processes not to their taste.

Besides the ordinary work of cura personalis and cura apostolica, I also had to visit some of our men in distant lands.  One of those trips was to Sri Lanka.   I went to Sri Lanka in December of 1985.  First, I flew to Rome and from there to Colombo.  Father Ashley Samarasinghe, the provincial of the Sri Lanka Province of the Jesuits, met at the airport.  I later learned that Father Ashley had been working among the very poor of his country fighting to provide better housing and jobs for them.  He returned to that work after his term as provincial. 

I arrived in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) not long after the civil war had started.  This meant that the Eastern Province, where the fighting was fiercest, the place that gave birth to the Tamil Tigers, the revolutionary fighters hoping to establish an independent country, was closed to foreigners like me.  That was a problem.  Most of the men who had come to Sri Lanka from the New Orleans Province were in fact in the Eastern Province, and they were the ones I most wanted to see.   I did see them, and I’ll explain in a bit how I managed that.

The day after I arrived, I was driven to Kandy to visit with some of the men there.  The road was crowded with many different conveyances, buses, cars, trucks, mini-vans, bicycles, and oxcarts.  The driver was perfectly calm as he darted from one side of the road to the other going around the slower traffic.  On the other hand, I was on pins and needles the whole time.   The Jesuits have a retreat house in Kandy.  After visiting with the Jesuits stationed there, one of the Sri Lankan Jesuits took me to see the internationally famous botanical gardens.  We blended into the throng of tourists.  I heard English, Spanish, French, German, and several other languages that I could not identify.  The gardens were in bloom with a wide variety of flowers and plants. 

My guide also took me to the Topaz Hotel, high on a hill overlooking some of the most spectacular scenery in the country.  There were a multitude of hills dressed in coconut trees with mist floating between them.  I remember thinking how sad it was that such a beautiful country should be engaged in a civil war in which thousands of its citizens were dying, being killed by fellow citizens.  The country is divided into two predominant ethnic groups: the Tamils in the Northeast, and the Singhalese who control the government and the rest of the country. 

One of the Jesuits, a historian, gave me an insight into the present conflict.  At one time, the British ruled Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon.  A strategy of the British to control the majority population of Singhalese was to recruit the minority Tamils, educate them, give them important posts in the government, and have them also as military allies.  Then, of course, the British pulled out and the Tamils were left on their own.  Then as the Singhalese majority rose to political and military power, the Tamils were edged out of important posts that they had held before.  The Singhalese dominated government also closed the religious schools which had been instrumental in educating the Tamil elite.  The reaction to these events by the Tamils was one of the causes of the civil war.

The history of Sri Lanka from the times of the Kings, the Dutch, Portuguese, and English colonization is a much more complex history than I have described in the previous paragraph.  It is but one view of the conflict.  I think it has some elements of truth.  Not being a historian myself, I will not try to enlarge on this theme.

Now, however, how did I, a foreigner, manage to go all the way to Batticaloa that was in a forbidden war zone?  Both the Jesuits of Colombo and I were determined that I would go to the Eastern Province to see both American and Sri Lankan Jesuits there.  Early in the morning of December 23^rd, I was transported by minibus to Kurunegala, a town right on the edge of the forbidden zone.  Meanwhile two Singhalese Jesuit scholastics boarded the train going from Colombo to Batticaloa.  In preparation for the transition into the war zone, I had to be made to look like an already established missionary.  These could travel back and forth without problems.  Someone found a white alb, affixed a roman collar to it and put a black cincture (cloth belt) on it and gave me a prayer book to read.  When the train stopped at Kurunegala, several of us go on the train, purportedly to visit with the scholastics, then one of the scholastics got off with the “invaders” and I took his seat.  I immediately put my face into the prayer book.  But all was not well yet.  There was a soldier assigned to watch for just such intruders as myself and whenever he came into the railroad car, the scholastic would jump up and converse with him in Singhalese while the soldier eyed me suspiciously.  After a few miles into the war zone the soldier must have figured that he couldn’t put me off anyway and stopped coming to check.  I’ll always be grateful to that scholastic, now Father Gamini, for helping me while risking arrest himself.

In Batticaloa the Jesuits still live at the residence of the school that they ran until the government of the Prime Minister, Mrs. Bandaranaike, closed it along with all other private and religious schools.   The day I arrived we gathered in the evening for a meal in the large dining room of the residence.  After a while I heard popping noises outside and said, “My, I didn’t know you all celebrated Christmas with firecrackers.”  “No firecrackers, Edmundo,” one of my companions said, “There is a fire fight between the rebels and the soldiers not far from here.”  That was when I realized that I was really in a war zone.  The next day we went to visit a sick Jesuit in a nursing home.  On the way back, there was shooting on the street right close to where we were.  Later we learned that a motorcycle, following a truck full of soldiers, had backfired.  The soldiers thought someone was shooting at them and started shooting at random.  Someone said later that an innocent bystander was arrested to cover up the soldiers’ impulsive action.

Later we went to Father Godfrey Cook’s little church out in one of the nearby villages.  About a year earlier, the Muslims from another village had come to burn down the houses of Hindus and Christians who were in Father Cook’s parish.  Father Cook along with Fathers Fred Cooley and Harold Webber had repulsed the Muslims, but still many families were left homeless.  The church patio provided refuge for such families until other housing could be provided for them.  One of the moving stories about this event was that of a little Hindu girl who wandered into the church and saw the large crucifix.  She started crying as she looked on the image of Jesus nailed to the Cross.  “What did he do?” she kept asking, “What did he do?”  It was a teachable moment for Father Cook who could then talk about Jesus to his Hindu neighbors.

As it was Christmas Eve, Father Cook gathered a group of children to sing Christmas carols for me in Tamil.  I had a hard time keeping from laughing.  The children sang in their native tongue but with a thick German accent.  Father Cook, who was German, taught them and they simply imitated his accent in their Tamil renditions of the carols!

The time finally arrived when I had to return to Colombo.  The Jesuits took me to the train station early in the morning.  There was a large crowd of people milling around but everyone was silent.  This was very unusual.   Wherever I had seen crowds like that before there had always been a hubbub.  The reason for the silence soon appeared.  There on the columns of the station hung two young men with their intestines hanging from the slice in their belly.  They were both dead.  Then the silence was shattered because the police had brought the mother and sister of one of them to identify his body and their cries pierced the silence.   Again, I was shocked that such a beautiful country with such thoughtful and gentle people could show forth such savagery.

The train ride back to Colombo was long and slow because the soldiers had to walk ahead of the train to make sure that the tracks had not been mined.  It was a relief to finally get off the train in Colombo.  From there I flew back to Rome where another unexpected event occurred.  As we approached the Rome airport, the pilot announced that we would be delayed in landing because of traffic patterns at the airport.  When we landed, we discovered that a Palestinian commando had shot people waiting for an Israeli flight. Everyone in the airport was evacuated so that the caribanieri, the Italian police, could search for any other suspects.  I joined the people outside the airport.  Some were crying, and others were wondering what would happen next.  The television people were already there, interviewing the survivors. 

Once they let us back in, I went straight to the Iberia Airlines counter and bought a ticket for Madrid.  I managed to get the last seat on the plane.  Before we left, I was able to call the Jesuits in Madrid, and they said they would come for me at the airport.  I stepped out of the plane in Madrid, and the Jesuits were there.  Then I noticed the guardia civil spaced about twenty feet apart all through the airport with their Uzis at the ready.  Seeing my unspoken question, one of the Jesuits said that a note was found in the pocket of one of the Palestinians in Rome that said that the Madrid airport was also targeted.   I suppose that because the Spaniards took precautions, the raid never happened there.

After a few days in Spain, I flew home to New Orleans and reflected that all during my trip I never felt any sense of panic or even much fear.  I felt that I was simply doing my duty as provincial, and that God was calling me to visit our men and to experience these dangers.  I felt that if God wanted me to go home before my term was over, that would be fine with me. 

   Chapter Seventeen:  The Trip to El Salvador

(Picture taken of the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador.)

After my term as provincial expired in 1989, I went to Santa Barbara, CA, for some physical, spiritual, and theological retooling.  I did not imagine that my next trip abroad would be to the war-torn country of El Salvador.   On December 16, 1989, a unit of the Salvadoran army invaded the Central American University and killed six Jesuits and two women workers.  Apparently, the intended target was Father Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. who had been working to bring about a truce between the government and the rebels.  His efforts infuriated the military and the right-wing politicos, and so he became targeted for assassination.  It seems that the others were killed to leave no witnesses behind.  The government could then claim that it was the rebels and not the army who had killed the Jesuits and their workers.  The Jesuits and their workers thus joined the list of Salvadoran martyrs along with Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot and killed while he was celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980, and Sisters Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel, along with lay volunteer Jean Donovan, who were murdered by a Salvadoran death squad trained by the United States’ School of the Americas on December 2, 1980.  Besides Father Ellacuria, other Jesuits killed were Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Armando Lopez, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno.  There were also two lay women killed: Julia Elba Ramos, a cook, and her daughter 15-year-old Cecilia Ramos. 

It was that sad event which prompted the president of the Jesuit Conference in Washington, D. C., Father Pat Burns, S. J., to call me and ask if I would be willing to travel with Father General Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S. J., to San Salvador to be with the surviving Jesuits and to investigate the murder of those who were killed.  I admit that I had some trepidation about going back into another war zone, since the civil war was in full force in El Salvador, and the Jesuits were obviously targets of the Salvadoran military, or at least of death squads within the military.  But I thought this a privileged assignment I was being given, and I knew that Father Kolvenbach–whom I had gotten to know during my time at the General Congregation of 1983 in Rome–would be pleased to have me with him. 

Father Kolvenbach, Father Alvaro Restrepo, Father General’s Assistant for Northern Latin America, and I met at the airport in Miami.  While we were waiting for the flight that would take us to San Salvador, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman from El Salvador who was returning from Paris back to his own country.  He was the owner of a coffee plantation.  I asked him to tell me his view of the conflict in his country, and he did.  I was quite distressed at what he said.  The problem, he contended, are some of these immoral women who go around sleeping with just anybody and having children, and who then must be supported by people like himself.  In other words, it’s the poor people who are at fault.  If only they would act in a moral way, things would be fine.

I could not believe my ears.  A few years before, the American political cartoonist Jules Feiffer had drawn a woman on welfare saying something like this: “I’m the reason for corruption in Washington; I’m the reason for our involvement in the wars in Central America; I’m the reason for all that goes wrong in America!”  The cartoon was supposed to be satirical, but this man was serious in his analysis.  The poor are forever being blamed for their poverty, as if they set the policies that control minimum wages, the level of unemployment, and are the guilty ones of racism and discrimination.  Hearing that same drivel from a wealthy Salvadoran made me sick at heart as we waited to board the flight there at the Miami airport.

We arrived in San Salvador just prior to the toque de queda, the 6:00 p.m. curfew by which everyone not in the military’s uniform had to be out of the street or be shot on sight.  We went to the Jesuit house near the dormant volcano.  The mountainside was strafed by bombing runs by the military during the night.  I supposed there were guerilla bases on that mountain.   There was a certain amount of tension in the Jesuit community that included both young and older Jesuits, because it was not certain whether the killing of Jesuits had stopped or whether there would be death squads coming after the rest of them.  Back in 1977, a death squad threatened to kill all the Jesuits if they did not leave the country.  International pressure from the United States and other countries made the threat null and void.  But the same people who made that threat were still around in 1989, so the fear that they might carry out their threat was real.

The most important part of the trip was to go see the very spot on the U.C.A. (the University of Central America) where the six Jesuits and the two laywomen were tortured and killed.  There seemed to be no question that members of the Salvadoran army did the killing.  The University is in a militarily sensitive zone with an army post nearby.  The seat of government is just a stone’s throw away, and families of the military dependents live in the area just north of the University.  The time it took to do the killing was two and a half hours, and there were sharp shooters posted on nearby roofs to keep neighbors from coming out to their backyards to see what was happening at the University.  The killing happened with more than a hundred shots fired, and no response from the army troops in the area.  The scene was peaceful, but the thought of what happened was horrifying.

Father Kolvenbach met with both the President of El Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani, and with Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas.  He urged President Cristiani to push the investigation of the murders and offered comfort and support to Archbishop Rivera Damas who had been quite outspoken against the abuses and injustices both by the regular army and the rebel FMLN. 

One of the most moving visits was to a small parish community where one of the slain Jesuits had been saying Mass on weekends.  Father General and I thought we were going there to console them, but it turned out that they were the ones who tried to console us.  It was a gathering of some fifty poor simple people.  They provided cookies and coffee, sang for us, and made us feel welcome.  For me, it was the most truly moving visit of the trip.

On the morning of December 29^th, we made our way back to the airport to fly back to Miami.  On the way to the airport, in the morning light, I saw how beautiful El Salvador was, with its lush green hills.  The mists gave the panorama a wonderfully serene and peaceful look.  I prayed, as I looked on that scene, that the human panorama might one day become as serene and peaceful as the physical one I was surveying.

Chapter Eighteen:  On to Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas

(Naná comes to visit at the Seminary and receives a warm welcome from the Hispanic Seminarians.)

I spent the first part of 1990 at the Jesuit Spirituality Center at Grand Coteau, LA, doing an internship in conducting personally directed retreats.  Then there came a request from Father Tom Cumisky, O.P., who had been provincial of the Southern Province of the Dominicans at the same time as my own term as provincial, and who was now rector of Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, TX.  The Seminary was accepting a diversity of candidates who were Hispanic, African American, Haitian, Polish, Czech, Vietnamese, and Anglo Americans.  He said he needed someone to do work with the students to help weld them together into a sense of community.  I thought the task was daunting and challenging and wondered if I would be up to it, but I accepted to go. 

At the Seminary I was made faculty advisor, spiritual director, and academic dean.  I also taught in the Master’s in Ministry Program at the University of Dallas.  As faculty advisor, I was to guide the pre-theologians through their year or two of study and formation.  The pre-theologians were men who had already graduated from college but need to take philosophy courses at the University to prepare them to move on to theology.  I met with each one personally once every two weeks or as they requested.   The idea of “formation” beyond academic formation was a strange idea to some of them.  The formation was into a religious culture, and into a life with a basis in Catholic spirituality.

As spiritual director, I met with some of the underclassmen, especially those from Mexico and Europe who had trouble expressing themselves in English.  My task was to assess their interior life and to encourage them to learn to meditate and contemplate in the Ignatian manner, since that was my own basic spirituality.  There were, of course, moments of vocation crisis and other emotional problems.  Some left the seminary, and many moved on to the next level.

As academic dean, I was to keep track of how the men were doing in their studies.  After one of the grading periods, I asked that everyone who had received a grade a C or below should come see me.  I waited two days, and no one came.  Since I had seen the grades already, I set my alarm clock for two thirty in the morning, got up, dressed, and went and knocked very loudly at a couple of bedrooms.  The guys came out and looked at me perplexedly and I said, “Son, I asked that you come see me and you didn’t, so I came to see you.”  The next morning there was a line waiting to see me.

(Posing with Pre-Theologians.)

And what about my other task, namely, trying to weld the diverse groups into one community?  Part of the idea was to get them to understand the cultural differences, accept them, and realize that each culture brought gifts to the whole community.  But preconceived ideas about others are hard to break down.  So, I did some role-playing games, where the Hispanics were given the role of playing Vietnamese, the Vietnamese were to play at being African Americans, the Anglo Americans were to take the role of Hispanics, etc.  It was a real eye opener for them to realize how much they stereotyped each other.  The good thing was that once the prejudices were on the table, they could challenge each other and begin to be more accepting of each other.

At the University of Dallas, I taught the course on the Social Encyclicals of the Popes, beginning with Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII and through the work of Pope John Paul II.  All went well until I got a note from the chair of the Theology Department telling me that I had to teach a document about Liberation Theology by Cardinal Razinger.  I went to the chairman and told him that I was not teaching Liberation Theology, but he insisted.  So, I told the class that they would not understand the Cardinal’s document unless they understood something about liberation theology, so I gave them a short course in it.

I only spent three years in the Seminary, but they were good years.  I made some life-long friends there, especially Tom Cumisky who became my friend and spiritual director, Larry LeNoir who was my golfing partner, Gail Tillman who is the most intelligent person I’ve ever had the privilege to know, and Luis Antonio Payan who became a Phi Beta Kappa as a college junior.  Since that time, Tom has passed away, Larry, Gail, and Luis Antonio have earned their Ph.D.’s and I alone remain unlettered to tell the tale!

Chapter Nineteen: Back to the House of Bread

St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, LA houses the Jesuit Novitiate, and is therefore known as the House of Bread.  I had spent four years there when I first joined the Jesuits, and another few months after I finished my stint as provincial.   In 1993, I was reassigned as director of the Jesuit Spirituality Center that is also housed at St. Charles College. 

I decided to arrive at the Spirituality Center two weeks ahead of time to sort out my papers and to spend time with Father Tom Madden, S.J., the current director; he was moving to Miami to become pastor of the Gesu Church.  However, my plan didn’t work.  The day I arrived, Father Madden asked if I could take some retreatants because Sister Connie Champaign’s brother had died in New Orleans, and he had to go to the funeral to be with the family.  So, forget the sorting.  I jumped into the work, and my notes were piled up in boxes in the old dining room.  There they remained until I was ready to move again.

I spent six years at Grand Coteau.  My main job was the direction of the Center, but I was able to conduct preached retreats for priests, deacons, and lay people in places from Florida to California and personally directed retreats of five to thirty days right there at the Spirituality Center. 

I put my meager computer skills to work right away because the database of fifteen thousand names had been corrupted.  That database was our lifeline because every year we had to send out our catalog so that our clients would know when the various retreats and special events were being held.  It was also how we raised extra money to make ends meet.  We could only get out about half the database, but that was not acceptable.  I made what copy I could and sent it to a company in California, but they still could not access the second half of the database.  So, I stayed up night after night until I figured out how to bypass the corrupted data and get to the second half of the database.  Then I had to translate the whole thing from Mac to IBM and that too took some doing.  Those of you, who are already computer whizzes, should remember that this was out in the countryside in 1993 before there were hundreds of geeks roaming around.

Although the New Orleans Province very generously supported the Spirituality Center, I nevertheless, felt that we should raise some extra money to fix up some of the rooms to make them more attractive to our retreatants.   So, I gathered a few friends from the area and started a golf tournament by which we raised some ten thousand dollars at its peak.  I also invited people in the area to name a room after a parent, priest, Sister, or anyone else they might want to honor, by contributing a fixed amount to paint, refurnish, and replace fixtures for one room.  We did several rooms this way.  Several more were done after I left Grand Coteau.

My proudest achievement at the Spirituality Center was to provide personally directed retreats in Spanish.  We attracted retreatants from Mexico, Central and South America.  I directed a 30-day retreat for a priest from Brazil.  He knew no English, little Spanish, and I had trouble understanding Portuguese.  Somehow with my Spanish and his Portuguese we managed.  Later, I thought we maybe should have tried using Latin, but he was a young priest and knew no Latin. 

Another very moving experience for me was directing a retreatant who was both blind and deaf.  He had not always been deaf, so he could speak.  We communicated with a Braille typewriter.  I typed in regular English, and he read my ideas in Braille.  The whole time I kept asking myself, would I just give up if I were unable to see or hear?  Yet this man kept on going, using his mind and his tactile sense to communicate and to keep on going.  He was a cheerful man.  His sister who set up the retreat told me that he cooked for himself at home, most days took the bus to the YMCA, went swimming, and–most amazingly–played the piano.  I asked what he got out of playing the piano.  “Vibrations and a remembrance of what notes sounded like when I was not yet deaf,” he told me.  I’ll forever be grateful for my senses.

During my time in Grand Coteau I also started working with a project of the National Catholic Council on Hispanic Ministry (NCCHM).  The project was a leadership development program targeted to young Hispanic Catholic leaders from dioceses around the country.  The Lilly Endowment Fund provided a substantial grant to provide not only travel and stipends for those doing the training, but also for participants who might have to travel to places like Chicago, Denver, Palo Alto, San Antonio, Las Cruces, and other places which had Catholic retreat centers.  My job was to help with the planning of the program and to review it, and to provide a day of recollection at the beginning so that the workshop could be in a markedly Catholic social justice context.  Adela Flores Gallegos, a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, was the director.  She put together a great team of experts to teach the participants about strategic planning, fundraising, negotiating, and other skills necessary for exercising leadership in their communities.  The project went on for three years.  After the funding ran out, all the printed materials were turned over to dioceses that were interested in continuing the workshops.  Meeting and dealing with young Hispanics from New York City to Los Angeles was a real conversion experience for me as I was able to relate to the next generation of young leaders. 

One of the Jesuits whom I shall never forget was Father Henry Montecino, S. J.  He came to the Spirituality Center while I was there, a masterful retreat master and homilist.  But the thing I remember most about him was that while I was provincial, he volunteered to go to Uganda to teach philosophy.  Father Louis Lambert, S. J., had written to me asking if there was anyone who could go teach philosophy at a diocesan seminary in Uganda.  Henry was nearing his retirement after teaching for more than twenty years at Loyola University of New Orleans.  When he got my letter of inquiry, he said “yes.”  His generosity both surprised me and delighted me.  Uganda in the 1980s was involved in civil strife and was therefore very dangerous.  Henry told me later that the rebels would come to the seminary looking for members of certain tribes so they could kill them.  The faculty had to hide these seminarians until the rebels moved on.  They themselves were in danger, of course.  Eventually Henry came home for a visit to reassure his family that he was doing well, but then the government of Uganda did not let him back into the country.  That’s when he came to Grand Coteau.

Chapter Twenty:  A Visit to Spain

The New Orleans Province provided me with the opportunity to visit Spain for a month before reporting to my new assignment in Albuquerque, NM.  I had been in Spain for business twice before but never with much time to be a tourist.  Brother George Murphy, S. J., and I flew to Barcelona.  From that base, we traveled to the Basque country to visit the Ignatian places like Montserrat and Manresa.  Our visit to the Loyola castle was eventful. We went to the town of Loyola near San Sebastian where there are no Jesuits, instead of going to Azpeitia where the Castle of Loyola is located.  So, then we had to go back to San Sebastian to spend the night, and then continue by bus the next day to the Castle of Loyola in Azpeitia.  It was a real treat for both of us to be in the birthplace of St. Ignatius that was also the place where he experienced his total conversion from being a soldier caring only for honor and glory, a ladies’ man, and a lover of romantic novels, to becoming a man totally dedicated to the service of Christ and the Church. 

From there, we went to Bilbao where a curious thing happened.  We had a guide who was showing us around the center of town on a Sunday.  There were many families out walking around, enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine.  Our guide said to us, “You can see how peaceful it is here.  You see the families enjoying the place.  Why don’t more tourists come to visit us?”  Then we went into the Cathedral and prayed for a bit.  As we came out of the Cathedral and walked down the street, we passed a restaurant.  Our guide said to us, “This is the place where the Basque separatists killed our mayor with a bomb.”  How ironic, I thought, to talk about peace where things like that still happened.

To me the most moving and memorable part of that journey to Spain was the visit to the City of Granada where are located the tombs of the Catholic majesties of Ferdinand and Isabela, the monarchs who sent Columbus to the New World.  One of the Jesuits whom I had gotten to know at the General Congregation in 1983, a professor at the Jesuit University there, was our guide.

In Sevilla, I was interested in see the church were Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas had been baptized.  He had strongly opposed the enslavement of the natives of the New World, asserting that these were not half-human, but real humans with souls to be saved and not bodies to be enslaved.  In 1502, he went to Cuba as a soldier and was given an encomienda or small township for his military service.  But soon thereafter, he studied for and was ordained a priest.  Because of the Spanish conquerors’ desire to enslave the Indians, Bartolome wrote treatises objecting to this practice and made several trips to Spain asking the Crown to set up several towns in which Spaniards and Indians could live together as equals.  Later, he joined the Dominican Order and eventually became bishop of Chiapas in Guatemala.  In 1540, he returned to Spain and was the force behind the passage of laws prohibiting the enslavement of Indians and assuring rights of the Indians.  Back in America in 1544, he found great resistance to the new laws, and spent the rest of his life writing on behalf of and defending the Indians. 

Eventually Brother George and I returned to Barcelona and spent some time touring that interesting city.  We stayed at a Jesuit parish that had a great library, so I spent the “down time” reading Spanish history and watching classic bullfights on video.  As tourists, we spent a good amount of time admiring and visiting La Sagrada Familia church begun by Antoni Gaudi.  Gaudi also did several other buildings and a park. 

We also visited the Picasso Museum, especially the painful expression of war in a painting, called Guernica, inspired by the bombing of the Spanish town of the same name by German airplanes in 1937.  It is a painful thing to look at.  The painting is a testament to human brutality but has a flower at the end of a sword to give hope for peace in the mist of war. 

Chapter Twenty-One: The Years in Albuquerque, NM

My young friend, Luis Antonio Payan, now a professor of political science and an expert regarding border issues at the University of Texas in El Paso, flew to Lafayette, LA, and helped me drive a U-Haul truck to Albuquerque, NM.  We arrived there on January 2, 2000.  Many people thought that the world of computers and all that depend on them would end at the stroke of midnight of the year 2000, but it did not.

I took over as pastor from Father Frank Renfroe, S. J., a few days later.  I was happy to be in a parish with a school again.  Having a load of children around makes for a very lively parish.  Of course, it also makes for many headaches, but these are a small price to pay in return for the great joy that children bring to a faith community.

I soon discovered that the principal of the school was Sister Marianella Domenici, S. C., a blood sister of U.S. Senator Pete Domenici.  She was not only a competent administrator, but she also made sure that the Catholic character of our Immaculate Conception elementary school was evident to everyone.  I told her then that during my time as pastor, I would pray that she would outlast me at the school so that I would not have to try to find someone as well prepared and competent as she was . 

God granted me that prayer.

The Jesuits already in the parish were very welcoming.  When Luis and I arrived, they immediately set to unload my boxes of notes and books and brought them to the basement where I could work on sorting things out later. 

Besides the School, the parish was responsible for an assisted living facility for aging persons, many of whom had little money except what the government gave them.  The facility had been the convent for the Sisters of Charity back when they staffed St. Mary’s School.  When most of the Sisters left, those who remained moved to apartments nearby and the convent was then converted into a place for those who could no longer be at home by themselves.  Mr. Patrick Newell had directed the facility for 17 years and had managed to keep it in the black even though so many residents were unable to pay the full amount required.  Mr. Newell begged and raised the extra money necessary every year.  Here again was someone who was dedicated and competent.

Then there was the Marie Amadea Shelter for Pregnant Teenage Girls.  At a time when some of the social agencies were encouraging young girls to abort their babies, the parish was providing special care both for the girls and their babies.  Dorothy Wickens, supported by her husband Dick, ran the Shelter.  She made sure the girls went to school during their pregnancy and were taught ways of caring for their babies if they wanted to keep them or put them up for adoption by worthy families.

I admit that having to look after four major institutions—namely, the Church, the School, the Rest Home, and the Shelter—made my head spin at first.  But then, I realized I had great people to depend on.  Still, it made for many meetings. 

One of the unique people whom I met and tried my best to support was Brother Tom Reis (Shown here presenting the Oil of the Sick).  Brother Tom has enormous political skills in dealing with doctors, merchants, and politicians, but his whole purpose is to gain food and housing for people who are in great need.  Brother Tom finds some of the homeless men who sleep under freeway bridges, throw stones at them to get their attention, then feeds them.  He has a deep devotion to the Mexican Jesuit martyr, Miguel Pro.  I am convinced that Miguel has done many favors for Brother Tom and for those whom Brother Tom commends to Miguel.

Outside of these responsibilities, I accepted to be a teacher in both Spanish and English classes for the deacon candidates.  For the Spanish group I taught ecclesiology and Church history.  For the English group, I taught the Social Teachings of the Church.  At the end of their four years of classes and study, Archbishop Sheehan ordained sixty-four deacons for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Diocese of Gallup.  I also taught in the Escuela de Ministerios of the Archdiocese.  I enjoyed these opportunities to teach because my style is to be very interactive.  And my classes are never devoid of humor.

Appendix One–A

Bowie High School

Our family used to live on Santa Fe Street until 1947.  That street was in the Bowie High School district.  But in 1947 we moved to Sunset Heights that was in the El Paso High School District.  Technically, I was supposed to attend El Paso High School after I finished 8^th grade.  My uncles, aunts, and cousins who had attended Bowie urged me to go to Bowie even though it would take two buses to get to it.  Before the move to Sunset Heights, we had moved to San Elizario for a year and I attended Junior High in Clint, TX.  As I remember, I did not quite finish the 8^th grade but went and registered at Bowie.  That’s how I ended up becoming a mid-term graduate.

My dream was to join the band in high school.  But my uncles and cousins urged me to try out for football.  In 1949, Bowie and Jefferson High had not yet split, so Bowie must have had had close to 4,000 students.  That meant that the number of boys trying out for football would be enormous.  My thought was: “Go try out, get cut, then go see if you can get into the band.”   I could then tell my football-minded folks: “See, I tried but they didn’t want me.”  Why did I not get cut?  My view is that it happened this way:  the varsity, coached by Guy Davidson, asked the JV coach for some “dummies.”  The dummies were not supposed to do anything but stand in place while the varsity players ran their plays.  They were not supposed to hit us, only to tap us to show that they knew their assignments.  But apparently nobody told the varsity guys, so they creamed us.  After a while we, the dummies, started fighting back.  I guess when we went back to practice with the Junior Varsity, we had been seasoned a bit and I believe all the dummies made the team.  So instead of four years of band, I ended up with four years of football.

Another interesting thing that happened to me had to do with my joining a Joicst Cell.  Now this program was developed in France after WWII when the Communists formed small cells to propagate themselves and infiltrate society in small doses.  It was very effective.  So, a young Catholic priest named Joseph Cardijn, decided to create similar cells not motivated by Marxian materialism but by Catholic principles.  The idea was to win the working class to Christ and to counteract the Communist influence. In El Paso, a young priest invited me and five other Bowie students to form a Jocist Cell.  We did and we studied scripture and prayed and asked what we could do to win Bowie students to Christ.  We set up some talks by priests at the CYO and recruited students during school time to attend the talks.  We were quite successful.  The gathering of students was sizeable.

Then one day, the others and I were called to the principal’s office.  We were ushered into a conference room where we found the Bishop, the Superintendent of Public Schools, the principal, and a couple of other people.  We were told in no uncertain terms that our “proselytizing” violated the separation of church and state and that if we continued, we might be expelled.  But happily, a compromise was reached.  We, zealous apostles, could recruit the students before or after school but not on the school grounds.  That was my first lesson in ecclesiological/educational politics.

 Besides the subjects like history, sociology, physics, chemistry, and the rest, I got to run for school political office one year.  I won the post of vice president with Harry Drinis, a dear friend since grammar school days, as president.  The next year Harry and I were campaign managers of two of our classmates who also won.  I acted and sang in an operetta; made money by taking photographs, developing them at home, and selling them to the students for a slight profit.  I also joined a quartet that sang out in the street and made All-District two years in football.  One of my most hurtful experiences was being cut from the basketball varsity because I only had three years of basketball eligibility. 

In all this, I made many fast friends both from among my classmates and from among others in the school including faculty members. 

One more thing:  I was called back into the principal’s office with one month to go before graduation.  The principal told me that if I missed even one day of penance hall, since I owed more than a month’s worth, I would not graduate on stage with my class.  To this day I cannot tell you what I was guilty of that merited so many days of penance hall.

Appendix One–B

Cuentos del Abuelo

La Manita Zorra y el Manito Coyote y el Gran Queso

La Manita Zorra andaba por allí de noche buscando algún conejito para cenar.  Era una noche muy clara con una luna llena y el cielo lleno de estrellas.  De repente le brinca el Manito Coyote de atrás de una zarza y le dice, “Ahora sí, mi Manita Zorra, voy a festejar contigo, y tu vas a ser mi platillo!”   “Ay, Manito Coyote,” le dijo la Manita Zorra, “Mira que yo voy a comerme un gran queso deliciosos que me han ofrecido.  Si me dejas, yo lo comparto contigo.  ¿Qué dices?”   “Tu eres muy mentirosa y no te lo creo,” dijo el Manito Coyote.   Pero añadió, “¿donde esta ese queso tan delicioso?” le pregunto el Manito Coyote, “después que te coma, iré por él.”   “Pues, está muy cerca de aquí,” le dijo la Manita Zorra. “Mira, esta allí en aquel pozo.  Llévame para allá y lo veras.”

El Manito Coyote, como era muy tonto y tenía mucha hambre, arrastró a la pobre Manita Zorra hasta el pozo y de dijo, “A ver pues, ¿donde está el queso?”  “Mira adentro del pozo y lo verás,” le dijo la Manita Zorra.   Sin soltar a la Manita Zorra, el Manito Coyote se acercó al pozo y miró para adentro.  Abajo vió el reflejo de la luna al fondo del pozo y  su boca comenzó a salivarse al verlo.  “¿Y cómo, malvada Manita Zorra, vamos a sacar ese queso?” le preguntó el Manito Coyote.  “Si tu me pones en el balde y me baja hasta el queso, yo te lo traigo y juntos nos lo comemo.  ¿Qué dices?”  “Ni pensarlo,” le dijo el Manito Coyote, “Tú te lo comes y me dejas aquí con hambre,” replicó el Manito Coyote, “eso sí que no.”  “Entonces súbete tu la balde y déjame bajarte, y tú sacas el queso y entre los dos nos lo comemos.”  El Manito Coyote pensó un momento.  “Creo que así funciona mejor,” dijo.  Y pensó que el podría disfrutar tanto del queso como de la Manita Zorra. 

Sí subió al balde, y la Manita Zorra lo bajó poco a poco hasta echarlo al agua.  Luego ató la soga contra uno de los suportes del techito y se marchó.   Desde adentro del pozo, Manito Coyote comenzó a gritar: “Manita Zorra, alguien se ha robado el queso.  Sácame de aquí.”  Pero nadie le contestaba porque Manita Zorra se había ido.  Con el tiempo, vinieron unas mujeres y sacaron el balde con el Manito Coyote casi muerto de hambre.  Las mujeres le pegaron con sus jarros, y el pobre apenas se escapó de ellas.

La Manita Zorra y el Manito Coyote y La Boda

Después de mucho tiempo, la Manita Zorra estaba descansando bajo un árbol cuando de repente el Manito Coyote se apareció y la tomó del cuello.  “Ahora sí, no te me escapas,” le dijo. “Ahora sí que vas a deleitar mi paladar!”  “Espera, espera,” contestó,” la Manita Zorra, “mira que en unos momentos llegan los de la boda.  Ellos traen mucha comida, carne, guisado, tamales, todo lo que a tí te gusta.”  “¿Cuál boda?  ¿De qué estás hablando?” le dijo el Manito Coyote.  “Pues, la boda de los conejos.  Yo estoy invitada, y si quieres, te llevo como huésped mío,” le mintió la Manita Zorra.  “Pero si yo no soy de los invitados, ¿cómo me van a dejar entrar?”  “No te apures,” le dijo Manita Zorra, “mira que aquí traigo un pañuelito, y con esto te puedo disfrazar.  Pero tengo que vendarte los ojos para que no te reconozca nadie.”  “Ay, pues,  para una cosa tan elegante, estoy dispuesto a todo,” dijo el Manito Coyote.  

La Manita Zorra le vendó los ojos y los llevo de la mano a un cañaveral y le dijo que allí se esperara porque pronto vendrían los novios. Luego la Manita Zorra comenzó a echar lumbre al cañaveral por todos lados.  Cuando el Manito Coyote oyó lo que para él eran cuetes, comenzó a gritar, “Manita Zorra, ya se acercan los novios, ya vamos a comer como reyes!”  Y brincaba de alegría y se daba vueltas en el aire.  Pero al ratito, le llegó la lumbre y saltó corriendo entre el cañaveral ardiente, se quemó seriamente pero logró escaparse.  “Ay, Manita Zorra, ya nunca volveré a creerme de tí.”  Pero ya nunca después buscó a la Manita Zorra, y cuando la veía de lejos, corría por otro lado.  Y así se acabaron los cuentos del Manito Coyote y la Manita Zorra.

             La pícara Manita Zorra                     El pobre Manito Coyote

Appendix Two

2003 – Homily on the Occasion of the 50^th Anniversary

of the 1953 Bowie Graduation

Dear Fellow Graduates of the Year 1953:

Not long ago I had an opportunity to listen to some high school students. These students were much as we were back in the 1950s.   One of the things which most impressed and disturbed me was that some said that they were suffering from low self-esteem.  This happened because they compared themselves to other students, and because in some cases they were not encouraged to acknowledge their gifts by those around them.

During our years at Bowie High School, we discovered something wonderful about ourselves.  We discovered that we had talents.  We have discovered that we were intelligent.  We discovered that we have a heart to love with.  We discovered skills and abilities that enabled us to do for ourselves and to serve the community.   We discovered that there were people, parents, teachers, friends, and classmates, who cared about us and wanted us to do well in life.

What we discovered are God’s gifts in us, God’s gifts to us, God’s gifts for us.

Now the question becomes: what have we done with these gifts?  Jesus asks us to be good stewards of the gifts entrusted to us.  Stewardship means that the gifts we are given are to be used as God wishes us to use them, and not to be abused or used for evil purposes.  Have we learned something?  Then we have the duty to share that knowledge with others.  Have we received care and nurture from others?  Then we have a duty to care and nurture others.  Have we learned to read and to do mathematics?  Then we have the duty to use those skills for the good of the community.  

God’s gifts are given not just for our own selves, but for the good of our families and communities.  We are called to be persons for others.  Too many people fall into what I call the “me first, me only, and me always” way of thinking.  Another word for it is selfishness.  What is called for in this world is generosity.  We need to be generous with our time, generous in our judgments about others, and generous with whatever we are given.  I hope we all learned the virtue of generosity.  It will serve us well wherever we go and in whatever we do.

True, sincere, constant generosity is only possible if we have a deep gratitude to God for the gifts that God constantly showers upon us.  To develop gratitude, we need to be attentive to the gifts we are given. To be attentive, we need to be reflective.  Don’t let the distractions of the world in which we live so overwhelm you that you do not take time to pray and to be reflective.

Let me finish with this, then: Be reflective, be attentive, be grateful, and above all else, continue to be generous.

Appendix Three

A Presentation to Young Hispanics from the

NCCHM Leadership Development Program

Based on the Ideas of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J.

by

Edmundo Rodríguez, S. J.

Theological Reflection, Part I: A Rationale and a Method

The Presupposition

There is an eros of the body, by which the body is filled with longing and desire to be physically united with another person.  But there is also an eros of the spirit that fills the human spirit with desires and longings for what is beautiful, for what makes sense, for what is true, for what has value, and for what has ultimate value.  The energies of the desire of our person, our body-spirit, are at the heart of what it means to be human.

What is the method?

It is not something we learn which is alien to us, but rather that which is ourselves in our search for what is good and true as we engage in every facet of life.

Experience

We attend—pay attention–to real experience because we will want to understand and evaluate the quality of our experiences: Does this experience fit into my life?  Do I want it to?  Is this experience worthwhile?

What is experience?   It is everything we receive through our senses, sight, touch, hearing, and taste:  it is the things we read, the people we meet, the situations we encounter, the events which happen to us, our own feelings, the artifacts we use, and the natural things around us.

Most of the time, the experiences we want to attend to especially are those that appear to us or to others to be significant.  

We often attend to significant experiences through our memory.  We can also gain experience by reading about the problems that afflict other people, and by being attentive to those who so suffer.  For example, understanding those experiences can give us a better understanding of ourselves and of others, and can help us become sensitive and respectful of them.

Exercise 1:  Try to remember a special day in your life like a graduation, the birth of a child, a serious illness you may have experienced, or a celebration.  What do you see?  What do you hear?  Do you feel or taste anything?  Now make some notes about this.

Share your notes with one other person.  This will help you understand the process of experiencing.

Understanding

The root of understanding is a spontaneous drive that we all possess, and that make sense of what we experience: what we read, what we see, what we are told, and what we feel.  We should include what we read or are told, because we cannot possibly experience everything that is important to attend to directly. 

Understanding is not something we can manufacture.  It comes spontaneously when we attend closely to experience.  Until we understand something, we haven’t understood it.  We can deceive ourselves, or others and pretend that we do understand, but we don’t.  We must therefore study the data of experience, turn it round and round in our heads, see what others have understood about it, until BINGO!  I SEE!  It is the Eureka experience.

Exercise 2:  Look again at the experience you annotated in the previous exercise.  What do you understand about that experience now that you did not understand before?  Is there a meaning about these events that you had missed before?

Share these findings with three other persons.

Judgment

Once we have understood our experience, we spontaneously move toward judgment, but judgment of what?  First, to judge whether (or not) our understanding is adequate.  Did we examine the data sufficiently?  Were we content with the first bright idea that came to us, and perhaps missed something more important?  Did we try to verify the data?  If I judge that my understanding is faulty, then I must return to examining the experience (data), more carefully observing and verifying the reality.

Secondly, we need to judge whether what we have understood involves values.  Is this something good?  Is this something bad?  This is where theological reflection begins.  Why?  It is because we need scriptural and theological criteria as norms for judging. 

While we must ultimately learn to trust our own judgment, we must be careful not allow our judgments to be biased.  There are four types of biases.

BIASES

The four biases to which we humans are susceptible are:

1) The neurotic bias comes from the tension between what is immediately satisfying what is more ultimately good.  Taking a few more drinks may be immediately satisfying, but it may lead to drunk driving or to saying things that are better left unsaid.  Doing the hard work of studying mathematics may not be pleasant now butpays off when one receives an engineering degree.

2) The egoistic bias comes when we pursue what is immediately satisfying to us and neglect what is valuable to others.  We may like to linger over a delicious meal, but we should not do it when we have promised someone that we would pick that person up at the airport.  This does not mean that we should not pursue what is both valuable and satisfying, only that we should not do it at the expense of others.

3) The group bias comes when needs and wants of the group I belong to, the folks I’m comfortable with, my friends and family, for example, become the main criteria for judging something to be good or bad.  When the board of directors of a large corporation decides to close a plant, putting thousands of people out of work, because it will make the company more profitable, they are defining the company as those who benefit from such an action, namely the stockholders like themselves, and are excluding the welfare of the workers.  Group bias is very insidious and very common, and it is probably one of the biases that the Gospels assail most vehemently.

4) The bias of common sense is the tendency of all of us to seek short term and immediate solutions even to complex problems.  If there is a difficulty, solve it now with the means at hand.  Common sense does not ask further questions:  Will solving things this way cause more problems down the road?   Think of the ways in which Western countries have supplied arms to small third world nations so that they might defend themselves. Then, instead of just defending themselves, those countries go to war!

Exercise 3.  After the Civil War, southern states passed laws segregating the races.  These laws were based on a judgment about the races.  What were these judgments and what kinds of biases were at work?

Share your findings with four other people.

Criteria for Judging

As believers, we know that no one knows our nature so well as our Creator, the one who made our nature as human beings.  In scripture our Creator reveals his own nature as a loving, caring, solicitous being and gives us guidelines for how we are to be.  Take the Commandments for example.  We sometimes say:  “They’re just don’t do this and don’t do that.  And who wants to live by don’ts?”  Yes, but when we attend to the don’ts, we discover that doing the opposite destroys trust, love, unity, cooperation and companionship among us, the very things which make life worth living.  When we lie and steal and cheat and hurt each other in other ways, we destroy our relationships with each other.  When we use each other whether for convenience or pleasure without regard to the dignity of the person, we create barriers that are hard to overcome.  Besides, scripture not only reveals to us what we should not be doing, but more especially what we should be doing to live full, satisfying human lives in union with other human beings.

What we call theology is really an elaboration of the seeds we uncover in the sacred writings, whether they may be the Judeo-Christian scriptures or the writings of other religious traditions.  For example, we speak of incarnational theology.  This means that we attend to the fact that God became human like us, thus affirming the goodness of our humanity, and thus identifies Himself completely with us.  We are no longer alien to God, nor God alien to us.  Our own mission as Christians, we believe, is to do likewise, to share each other’s joys and sorrows, not to stand aloof and distant from each other but to become part of each other as members of one body.  St. Paul’s image of the body of Christ is an example of incarnational theology.

Decision

We attend to experience to understand.  We understand to judge.  We judge to decide.  Decide what?  To decide whether (or not) something merits our embracing it, making it our own, taking action in its regard, avoiding it, or expressing it in some way. 

When we decide, we exercise our freedom.  We have within us a drive to be authentic.  We want to do what we judge to be right and good, but the decision to do that is not automatic.  Even when everything is clear, we can decide to pass up an opportunity. 

V. The Conversions

Intellectual conversion is the recognition and affirmation that the dynamic structure of our own knowing and choosing consists of the compound set of operations–experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding.  It is called a conversion because it breaks with the notion that knowing is simply “looking.”  That idea in philosophy is called Empiricism, the theory that the only things that exist are those that can be seen and measured in some way.  Therefore, trust and love and care do not exist because they cannot be measured.

Moral Conversion occurs when we recognize and acknowledge the drive within us to transcend the self, to go beyond our own interests and needs to attend to the interests and needs of others, to strive for the common good.  This conversion, this drive for self-transcendence is affective at its very core.  Our feelings–joys, sorrows, fears, and desires–give our intentional consciousness its drive and power.  We therefore must constantly discern our feelings with our values.  Sometimes we must overcome disagreeable feelings in order to do something good. 

Religious Conversion occurs when we come to understand both from our own experience and the testimony of Scripture, how it is that God loves:  unconditionally.  Unconditionally does not mean uncaringly, or indifferently, rather it means that God pours out God’s love to us whether we respond or not, whether we choose to love God back or not.  Jesus speaks of God making the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust, on those who are faithful and those who are faithless.  God does not withhold God’s love because we withhold ours.  Religious conversion occurs when we decide that our own efforts at love must also be unconditional, as difficult as that may be.  The litmus test that Jesus puts before us is the willingness to forgive seventy times seven times.  Religious conversion then is a radical conversion involving intelligence, judgment, and will, and therefore a difficult one to achieve. 

Exercise 4.  What does it mean for humans to love each other unconditionally?  Can you think of situations in which persons might find it very difficult to desire good to each other?  What would unconditional love mean in such situations?

Share your findings with three other persons.

   VI. Communication

The basis of all community is “common meaning” within a common field of experience, and community is the basis of all society.  All humans, and certainly all Christians, are responsible for community and common meaning.  We are individually responsible for what we make of ourselves, but collectively, we are responsible for the world in which we live.

Thus, if we have understood something important, something we have judged to be good, making us more human, more loving, more trustworthy, more caring, more reasonable, more responsible, then we need to communicate with others so that together we may achieve a common meaning.  This involves dialogue:  both speaking and listening, agreeing and debating, affirming and challenging, sticking to our values and being willing to change our views. 

In the end, theological reflection is about communication so that as a community of believers we may define and redefine ourselves.  That will be our next session.

Notes:

Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, (San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1978).

Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1979).

Vernon Gregson, The Desires of the Human Heart, (New York: Paulist Press, 1988).

Vernon Gregson, Lonergan, Spirituality and the Meeting of Religions, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985).

Theological Reflection–7

Theological Reflection Part II Reflection as Self-definition

As a personal but also as a community task, theological reflection is one of self-definition or self-redefinition.  What is self-definition all about?

Self-definition

Self-definition is not only to know who we are, but what flows from who we are, that is, the appropriate norms, relationships and actions that are congruent with who we understand ourselves to be.  In the musical Oliver, Fagin and the Artful Dodger sing about being pick-pockets and how pickpockets see rich people as potential targets, how artfully a wallet should be lifted, and what a glorious thing it is to lift someone’s wallet or pilfer someone’s purse without being caught.  Their self-definition as pickpockets is what makes their criminal acts flow smoothly and without guilt.  They have a moment of doubt when they think about going straight like other folks, but they put that aside like an ugly temptation.

Fagin and the Artful Dodger have accepted the self-definition, and that is what they are already as their permanent self-definition.  A Christian cannot do that, and that is why Christians, and the Christian community, must engage in theological reflection.

Sciences and Self-definition

Self-definition for believers comes not only from scripture, but also comes from the reality of the present, the understanding that we have of ourselves through the sciences (like neurology, psychology, and sociology).  The principles gathered from scripture and tradition are to be applied to the present reality.  The task of theological reflection is to integrate that which comes to us from the sacred sources and the understanding we have of ourselves now.  It is an on-going task because both the knowledge of ourselves through the sciences and what we understand of our traditions and scripture are continually growing.

The Starting Point

Self-definition begins with understanding of who one is at present.  That involves looking at our values, our relationships, our goals, what we actually do and where our resources (money and energy and time) are invested.  This also includes looking at our religious and cultural conditioning, our family of origin issues, the results of earlier choices and our desires.  It also means looking at how all this plays out in our relationships and our decisions, actions, and behavior.

The Summoning Self

A second moment of self-definition is to look within at the summoning self.  This is the self that is being called forth by new values, new understanding, and new challenges from different circumstances.  The summoning self will emerge as we look within, as we examine our values, as we study the reality around us, as we develop a deeper understanding of scriptures and the meaning of our traditions.  This summoning self challenges us to change, to grow, to leave behind comfortable paradigms and ways of thinking about and viewing the world around us.  This moment is a crucial one because we can reject the summoning self and be satisfied with the present self or we can begin to move toward the summoning self, breaking through the fear of change and the pain of letting go.

Beyond our own horizon

The summoning self causes us to project our horizon beyond that which our present self can see.  That which was beyond begins to appear if we give ourselves permission to see it.  For example, many people see those who are in prison as bad people who have forfeited their human dignity and who deserve whatever happens to them there.  But if we allow ourselves to think of those “bad people” as real human beings, as brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, as persons with feelings, who cry, who experience humiliation, loneliness, and fear, then we may begin to expand our horizon to include them in the circle of our concern.

The Self – a (re)shaping moment

The third moment is that of self-(re)shaping, of determining to change from the present self to the summoning self.  This will require a deliberate decision because the old self will resist dying, the old self will object, the old self will not want to risk giving up its gains to venture into unexplored territory.  Let’s take the example of a worker in a factory who becomes convinced that the only way for her and her fellow workers to gain better working conditions and fairer wages is to join a union.  But immediately rising within her mind is the specter of losing her job or being treated harshly by employers or being viewed with suspicion by fellow employees.  These fears are real. These things can really happen.  So, to move from being a passive victim to being an agent of her own future, she must decide to overcome all those fears and take those risks.  Only then can she make the transition from her old-self to a new-self to which she feels called, but which gives no guarantees.  The self-shaping decision must be deliberate.  There must be a calculation of the cost involved.  There must be a weighing of the pros and cons, but finally the only way to move from the old self to the new is to decide, there is no other way.

Exercise: the whole group should do this exercise.  Examine what has happened to the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council.  How is it different?  How have official attitudes within the Church changed?  Is there a new self-understanding within the Church?  How does this new self-understanding manifest itself?  Apply the ideas on conversion to this analysis.

A Case in Point (to be used only if the previous exercise is not done.)

Let’s take an example.  This happened to some parishes, not all, of course, since many are still exploring and struggling with the summoning self.  Consider a parish as it came out of the pre-Vatican II era, the summoning self which was triggered by the ideas and the spirit of Vatican II, and the self-shaping that took place as a result.  In 1960, the present self-definition of our example parish could have been like this:  a geographic entity without de facto boundaries; a service station for religious rites, a center for socializing, a special dwelling of God; the relationships between clergy and people were of professionals to clients, the clergy were outsiders to the community and the parishioners were strangers to each other, like people waiting in line to enter a theater; the authority lines were hierarchical and the style was non-reflective, no questions asked.  If there was any sense of community in such a parish, it was primarily through membership in small elite groups.  The activities included Masses, sacraments, schools, sports, dinners, and festivals. 

The summoning-self that was called forth by the spirit of Vatican II was that the parish be not a place but a people, a community which is called to be priestly, pastoral, and prophetic.  Collegiality became more important than hierarchy, authority as servant-leadership more important than authority as protective overseeing, communal decisions and communal action became more important than a Moses leading the Hebrews to the Promised Land. 

The parish which did the hard work of self-shaping according to the spirit of Vatican II, where both clergy and people decided to risk changes, began to look very different from its 1960 form.  The parish experienced conflict between those who were impatient for change and those who wanted to hold on to the traditions that were familiar to them.  The conflict was very emotional because religious views provide psychological stability to a person and cohesion to a community.  They are more difficult to change than political views, for example, although religious and political views are often intertwined.

The parish which made the step toward a new self-definition saw itself not so much as a gathering place but as a searching, pilgrim people who were called to created bridges among peoples at enmity with each other (race relations, immigration issues, ecumenical efforts) because it understood priestliness as an imperative to bring about reconciliation; a people called to serve the needs of others, to feed the hungry, to console the sorrowing, to defend the defenseless because it understood its pastoral nature from the model of the Good Shepherd; a people called to be the voice of the voiceless, to denounce injustices, and to bring hope to those who have been left at the margins of society.  These people are to be a prophetic people.

The relationships of such a parish are those of equals, of brothers and sisters, of collaborators.  Clergy are to be part of the community, not as standing above, but standing with the other members of the community.  The members are to know each other as persons and not as people waiting in a line.  The giftedness of all is called forth in ministries and projects that reflect the priestly, pastoral, and prophetic aspects of the community.  The communication is to be dialogic and the communal attitude reflective and prayerful.

The process of self-redefinition is long and painful and must occur through communal theological reflection, whether it is a small value-laden organization or the universal church.  There will necessarily be resistance, but the rewards can be tremendous:  a deeper humanity, a more joyful community, and a greater assimilation to what God calls us to be.

Notes:

Ben F. Meyer, The Early Christians: Their World Mission and Self-Discovery, (Wilmington DE: Michael Glazier Inc., 1986).

Theological Reflection, Part III: Leadership Values

Introductory:

Leadership skills are neutral.  Hitler, for example, knew how to gain an audience’s attention, motivate his hearers, and gain their loyalty.  Yet we remember Hitler as a monster who tore up the face of Europe and left a wake of death and destruction behind.  Leadership skills become weighted with the values of those who possess such skills.  In Hitler’s case, his values were that of promoting a master race, of forcibly taking the territory of other nations for Germany, and of eliminating the Jewish people from all the lands he conquered.  His values were racism, domination, and ruthless elimination of any who might oppose his designs.

Mahatma Gandhi was also a master organizer.   He knew how to mobilize people.  He knew how to get the world press to publicize his efforts.   He too gained the love and loyalty of millions.  His goal however was to free the people of India from the colonial domination of their English conquerors so that India might become a sovereign nation.  His values were the dignity of a people, the value of even the least important persons, placing the needs of people before material needs, promotion of a non-violent struggle against oppression, and a desire for people to live together in a just and peaceful society.  He did not hesitate to use his considerable skills to promote his causes for which he was willing to die and did.

The work of Gandhi, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and of Cesar Chavez could not have happened without their having become skilled in leadership skills. For example, Saul Alinsky trained Cesar as an organizer before he ever started the Farm Workers Organizing Committee.  Knowing how to raise money, how to use the press, how to plan, how to run meetings, how to utilize the special gifts of others, were not natural gifts of any of these leaders.  They had to learn, whether in training or by apprenticeships.  They were great-souled people, but we may never have heard about them without skills, because they would probably not have accomplished much.

You have been learning some very valuable leadership skills at the hands of masters.  You have learned about collaborative leadership, about the usefulness of understanding personality types, you have been exposed to important items about the structure of the Church, you have learned about the importance of obtaining and using power, you have been taken through exercises in strategic planning, in developing projects, in developing human and financial resources, and in this session, you have learned the importance of nurturing the leadership.  There are more skills to come, more things yet to be learned.  When you look back, you must admit that this program has equipped you to do some significant work back in your communities.

But one question is always present behind all these things you are learning:  what will you do with these skills and why?  Part of your training has also included theological reflection and presentations on the theological foundations of lay ministry and the idea of public discipleship.  These are intended to help you sort out your own values, to ask yourself what you really care about, and whether you will use these skills for self-promotion, for exclusion of others, or more crassly, for material gain; or will you use these skills to help transform an unjust, violent world into what the Gospel calls it to become.

Now I want you to do some value reflection fun exercises with me.

Exercise 1: THE RAFT (Done for fun and to reflect on values.)

There is an imaginary raft (from the Titanic) that can only hold three people.  But there are presently six people on it.  Each of the persons takes on an important imaginary role (doctor, president of the United States, mother of 10 children, etc.) that can be defended as needing to survive for the good of others.  These are written down.  No one is permitted to sacrifice him/herself but must defend the reason for continuing to exist.  The SIX persons then stand together closely and argue about who should survive.  Each must argue for self but may also argue for others.  At the end of 10 minutes, a negative vote is taken.  Those who are voted off the boat will be lost and the rest will survive.  If more than three people are left at the end of 15 minutes, all die.

Discussion:  What were the values that the participants discussed?  How were decisions reached?

Theological Reflection IV  (After Strategic Planning Session)

Those who think of themselves as victims tend to be passive and do very little planning and looking ahead.  Those who think of themselves as victims (something which often happens in the Hispanic community) don’t look ahead, don’t plan ahead, don’t ask the important questions.  We cannot afford to think from the viewpoint of a VICTIM, but that we must rather see ourselves as AGENTS who are challenged by the situation in which we find ourselves and are determined to respond to it.  The most successful leaders of business and industry learn to think like agents.  They don’t throw up their hands when massive problems confront them:  when they are deeply in debt, when the workforce goes on strike, when markets begin to shift, when war destroys mills and factories.   No, they say:  we’ll think our way through the problems and take decisive action.  We don’t always like the actions they take, like closing down steel mills or moving factories to other countries, but we have to admit that they do not act as VICTIMS.

Our challenge is to be AGENTS, but agents whose decisions are based on Christian values rather than purely utilitarian ones.  In other words, we cannot simply sacrifice people to solve our problems.  The towns in the Old West often solved their violence problems by killing anyone who caused trouble.  Their formula was simple:  if you have a problem, get rid of the problem by killing the people causing it.  We do the same now when we move factories leaving workers stranded, destroy public housing units leaving families homeless, and combine schools leaving some children far to walk to them. We need instead to work toward more humane solutions that usually require more thought, effort, and funding. 

Believers in God never think of God as a passive being.  They know God is creator, doer, agent, imaginative, inventive, and that God has a plan for human beings.  Is there really a plan?  Or is the created human universe just a chaotic mishmash of wars, confusion, some shining moments, and lots of fits and starts?  

As believers, we accept that there is a plan.  What is that plan?  What are its objectives?  What is its strategy?  It is through the Jewish and Christian scriptures that we uncover the plan.  What is the ultimate objective?  To unite the human creature with the Creator, so that the human may be “divinized” and enjoy the bliss which an only come from union with the Creator.  That objective will also result in communion among the humans themselves, no longer with the dark shadows of evil lurking in their relationships but enveloped in the energy of love.

And how is this ultimate objective to be achieved?  Certainly not by destroying the Creator’s most precious gifts to humans: namely, their intelligence, their free will, and their ability to grow and change.  We humans sometimes wish that the free will of some of our fellows would be taken away, thereby making them less problematic and dehumanizing them.  No, God’s strategy seems to be to use the very elements that are so destructive to become redemptive.  Thus suffering, which is not willed by God but is the result of human choices, can become the source of unity among humans, for often it is only in the common bond of suffering that isolation is bridged, that barriers fall, and that people unite in a common effort to bring about a better world for themselves and for each other.  It is instructive that Jesus tells his disciples that if he is to be lifted up (on the Cross), he will draw all people to himself, and, of course, to each other.   Another element is that instead of using force to transform society, humans will be taught to use the “weakness” of love and non-violence to transform society at a deeper level.  

Exercise 1:  Can you give more details about God’s plan for human beings?  Can you refer to biblical passages that point to God’s purposes? 

Share your findings with three other persons.

Exercise 2: God is agent and has made us humans to be agents as well.  The first task of any AGENT, a word that means a DOER, is to look closely at the situation, to analyze it, to judge it, and then to determine a course of action.  What we want to do now is to examine your situation in your part of the country from five different aspects:  The economic, the political, the religious, the educational, and the cultural/familial.

Write a brief answer to each of the following questions.  Afterward you will share the answers with five different people.  Do this quickly but remember that it should be done with those who live and work in proximity to each other. 

Start with the ECONOMIC situation:

     1) Name some of the ways in which your community depends on economic structures in this area:  who are the principal employers?  How has the community benefitted from these jobs?

     2) What is happening to jobs, wages, and benefits in the area now?  Is the workforce expanding?   Are there jobs for the young people?  What kinds of things are happening?

     3) If there are dislocations, why are they happening?  What is causing the problems in the ECONOMIC sector?

The POLITICAL situation:

     1) What kind of political representation and involvement does your community have?   What are its benefits to the community?

     2) Where is lack of representation felt and how?  What are the consequences of not being properly represented?

     3) What is at the source of the lack of political representation?   Why is the community not more aggressive in seeking representation?

The EDUCATION situation:

     1) What benefits does your community derive from the schools in your area?  What are some of the success stories?

     2) What problems are schools experiencing?  What problems does the community experience in relationship to the schools?  What are the consequences of these problems?

     3) Why are such problems being experienced?  What is the role of the school board and administrators?   What is the role of the community people in bringing solutions to these problems?

The RELIGIOUS situation:

     1) In what way have the churches benefited your community?   What are some of the ways in which the churches have been involved for the good of the community?

     2) What are the areas of problems experienced between the community and the churches?

     3) What is the source of these problems on the side of church administrators?  What is the source of these problems on the side of the people?

The CULTURAL/FAMILIAL situation:

     1) What are the positive aspects of the cultural patterns of the community as you experience them?

     2) What are the strong points of family life in your community?

     3) What are some of the problems experienced in families?

     4) What are some of the cultural patterns that cause problems in the community?

     5) What causes the negative family and cultural patterns to continue?

Take each question in the group in turn and prepare a report at the end of the session.

The Second Part of this exercise is to JUDGE.

Consider how the patterns you have uncovered fit or not into the plan of God for human destiny?  What values are at play, both positive and negative, in each of the situations you have described above.  What criteria should you use to judge what should be embraced and promoted and what should be confronted and challenged?  After outlining these items, what conclusions do you, as a group, reach?

This has been an exercise in Theological Reflection, for through it you will find that you (your group) will be redefining yourselves as agents of change rather than simply as observers.  But to move to the next level, you need to clarify the identity and decide to act on it.

Theological Reflection  (After Conflict Management session)

The book of Genesis offers two examples of conflict and reconciliation.  The first is that of Jacob and Esau, where the person who was the cause of the conflict is also the one who makes a move to reconcile. The second is that of Joseph and his brothers, wherein the person wronged decides that reconciliation is more important than taking revenge.  In the first case, the motivation is fear.  In the second, the motivation is love of family, but in either case, it is apparent that seeking reconciliation is a difficult and risky process.

Esau and Jacob

First, let’s look at the conflict between Esau and Jacob.  Jacob steals both his brother Esau’s birthright and his brother’s blessing from their father Isaac.  This means that Jacob is given authority not only over all the goods that Isaac leaves behind, but over his brother as well.  By right of being the firstborn, Esau should have had that authority.  “Esau bore Jacob a grudge because of the blessing his father had given him.  He said to himself, “…I will kill my brother Jacob.”  His mother Rebekah saved her son Jacob by whisking him off to live with his uncle Laban.

Many years later, it was Jacob, the guilty one, who sought to reconcile with his brother Esau.  Because he was very much frightened that his brother would finally have his revenge, he sent emissaries to Esau while Esau was still far away to say,

“I have been staying with Laban and have been detained there until now.  I own cattle, asses, and sheep, as well as male and female servants.  I am sending my lord this information in the hope of gaining your favor.”

(Gen. 32:5-6)

Jacob not only makes an offering of his possessions to his brother, who is coming against him accompanied by four hundred men but puts the women and children of his family ahead of him so that his brother’s heart my be softened by the sight of them.  It works.  Esau forgives Jacob and does him no harm.

Exercise 1.  What are some reasons for conflicts between persons who need to work together that you can identify from your own experience?  How do feelings contribute to making reconciliation difficult?  What happens when conflicts remain unresolved for a very long time?

Share your findings with others in the group.

Joseph and His Brothers

The second story from Genesis involving conflict and reconciliation is that of Joseph and his brothers.   It is interesting that the conflict now arises in the family of Jacob, so it appears to be a family trait.  Joseph is the youngest of eleven sons.  He is a dreamer and is also imprudent.  He dreams that he will have authority over his brothers and even over his parents and tells them so.  His father Jacob compounds the resentment of Joseph’s brothers by both expecting Joseph to report on the conduct of his brothers when they are out in the field, and by giving him gifts that he does not give to the others. 

The result is that many of his brothers finally decide to get rid of Joseph and eventually sell him into slavery.  As a slave, Joseph is taken to Egypt and eventually rises to be the manager of all the pharaoh’s crops.  He therefore becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt after the pharaoh himself.  Then a drought and famine hit the area and Joseph’s brothers are forced to journey to Egypt from Israel to beg for food to survive.  Without knowing it, they end up in front of their brother Joseph.

Joseph recognizes them immediately, but they have no idea that the person from whom they are begging food is their wronged brother.   At first, Joseph is tempted to punish his brothers:  “You are spies.  You have come to see the nakedness of the land…unless your youngest brother comes here, I swear to you by the life of the pharaoh that you shall not leave here.” (Gen. 42:14-15) The brothers are now helpful before him. 

Finally, after many comings and goings, Joseph breaks down:

Joseph could no longer control himself in the presence of all his attendants, so he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!”  Thus no one else was about when he made himself known to his brothers…. “I am Joseph,” he said to his brothers, “Is my father in good health?”  But his brothers could give him no answer, so dumbfounded were they at him.”                                                                                           (Gen. 45:1-3)

Joseph’s form of reconciliation becomes a model of Judeo-Christian reconciliation, for not only does he not demand any restitution from his brothers but offers them the opportunity to move their families to Egypt where they prosper under his protection. 

Exercise 2.  What is the temptation that Joseph must overcome in dealing with his brothers?  Does it make sense to you that Joseph has been called a “Christ figure”?  Why?  Why is Joseph’s form of reconciliation more fruitful than that of Jacob (of the previous story)?

Share your findings with the group.

Appendix Four

Questions and Answers about P.A.D.R.E.S

(A Sampling)

(These are e-mails exchanged between Richard Edward Martinez, a doctoral candidate and Father Edmundo Rodriguez, S. J. regarding the organization P.A.D.R.E.S.)

Date:   22.11.2000 22:25:35 Mountain Standard Time

From:  chicanoselfreliance@yahoo.com (Richard Edward Martinez)

To:      SJEDROD@aol.com

Dear Edmundo:

Hi.  Because I might not have been clear enough in my last emails, about the questions–I’m after the things that “radicalized” you guys.  I’m also looking for the things that created the right “window of opportunity” for PADRES to happen.  Hope this makes things a bit simpler.

 Different members were “radicalized” by different situations.  By the time I came to San Antonio, I was already well aware of racism, poverty, and discrimination both in the African American and Chicano communities.  Certainly Ralph Ruiz, who was working in the poorest section in San Antonio, was very aware of the dilapidated housing, the high unemployment and under-employment, the hunger, and the malnutrition rampant in San Antonio.  In fact, Ralph was featured in a CBS documentary called “Hunger in America.”  The Chicano movement was flourishing in South Texas about this time, led by people like Jose Angel Gutierrez and Willie Velasquez.  The Chicano priests who spearheaded the formation of PADRES were in touch with the Raza Unida Party as well as with lawyers, like Ruben Sandoval, who were fighting police brutality in South Texas.  We were also in touch with Latin American liberation theologians like Edgar Beltran, a Medellin peritus from Columbia, and Paolo Freire, the Brazilian Educator, who shared their analysis of what was happening to the poor in Latin American and helped us to make an analysis of what was happening to the Hispanic poor in the U.S.    Our main contact with the Latino-americanos was Father Virgilio Elizondo who was then in process of organizing the Mexican American Cultural Center, which was modeled on the Pastoral Institute of the Philippines.

Our “radicalization” was both rooted in the experience of the poor in our barrios and in the intellectual analysis of the unjust structures that produced the poverty and misery we were experiencing.

=====

Richard Edward Martinez

Doctoral Candidate

Department of Urban Planning

University of California at Los Angeles

Date:   22.11.2000 13:35:39 Mountain Standard Time

From:  chicanoselfreliance@yahoo.com (Richard Edward Martinez)

To:      SJEDROD@aol.com

Dear Father Edmundo:

Dissertation on Formation of PADRES

Richard Martinez, UCLA, 2000

I am analyzing the formation of PADRES, honing in on the context of the times and the factors that may have influenced its emergence.  My underlying assumption is that context matters, and there are specific things that are possible in one context and not others.  I will try to investigate the role of several factors, and if found to be significant, I shall use them as data to test my theoretical model.  My model is called the insurgent consciousness model, which is based on the thesis: how and under what conditions can oppressive institutions be changed from within to benefit the oppressed.

The model has 4 key elements and corresponding

questions:

ELEMENT 1: Competing framework that allows for the recognition that the grief is structurally caused; cause identifiable; grief unjust.

QUESTION 1: While it seems clear that PADRES members acknowledged the discrimination and injustice in the Church, I’m wondering what helped them see this?  Was it coming together as a group and sharing stories? During the 60s, did you think the Church should be a tool for social liberation?  If so, where did this thinking come from? 

Your question presumes that the discrimination in the Catholic Church was deliberate and that conscious injustices were committed against minorities.  There certainly is a more sophisticated way to view this.  The Catholic Church in the United States is basically an immigrant Church.  Most of the Catholics who came during the 19^th and 20^th centuries were rejected minorities, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, etc.  The majority Anglo-Protestants, considering themselves the founders of the country, considered the rejected minorities as inferior.  Most of the Catholics who came early fought their way up the political and economic ladder.  They brought their own priests and religious who established parishes, schools, and hospitals.  Each ethnic group formed a kind of ghetto (for example, in New Orleans there were some five churches within sight of each other, but each catering to a different ethnic group).  The U. S. Catholic Church, therefore, was, until the mid-1950’s, a largely composed of self-absorbed ethnic enclaves who struggled against the dominant majority and negotiated power among themselves. 

In the Southwestern U. S., the Catholic Church was predominantly Spanish and Mexican.  Up until the middle of the 19^th century, when Mexico lost the Southwest to the United States, the hierarchy in Mexico governed churches in what became U. S. territory.  Unfortunately, when the U. S. took over places like California, New Mexico, and Arizona, the Mexican connection was severed, and the priests and people were basically abandoned.  Then Rome then sent people like French Archbishop Lamy to New Mexico who preferred French and Italian clergy to Spanish and Mexican clergy.  That was the first phase of the lack of Hispanic clergy for the Hispanic Catholics of the Southwest. 

The second phase was the heavy immigration from Mexico in the 1920’s and beyond.  Because of the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Mexican Government after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, most of the new immigrants came without benefit of their own clergy.  That meant that it was up to the U. S. ethnic Catholic clergy to provide services for an ethnic group with was culturally foreign to them.  I believe they did the best they could under the circumstances.

It is important to note that northern European Catholicism developed in an atmosphere of conflict and polemics with the Protestants and that southern Europe Catholicism developed without such conflicts but rather in tension with both the Islamic and Jewish religions in Spain and then with the native religions of the peoples’ colonized in the New World.  Obviously, the difference in practices and style were vastly different between the two traditions and they clashed in the Southwest as Catholic peoples from Mexico and Catholic clergy from the northern European traditions attempted to continue to foster Catholicism in the United States.  It is out of this clash that many mistakenly label what was happening in the Southwestern Church as “discrimination and injustice.” 

It was not until the 1940’s and 1950’s that several Chicano young men began to join the ranks of the priesthood, primarily though religious orders like the Franciscans, the Claretians and the Jesuits, but also through the various dioceses.  That phenomenon planted the seeds for what would later become PADRES, since it was these priests who came out of the cultural conditioning of the southern European/ Spanish/ Mexican tradition of Catholicism.  Most understood that they needed to approach their communities in a different way than had the priests of the northern European tradition who had been serving those communities.  They also saw the poverty which afflicted the community and were motivated, often encouraged by the priests who had been serving these communities, to engage in the struggle to help the communities develop leadership to fight poverty and injustice.  For example, Father Harold Rahm, S. J., who worked among El Paso’s poor, encouraged several young Chicanos to join the Jesuits or the Diocesan clergy; Father Carmelo Tranchese, S. J., who hailed from Naples, Italy, fought tooth and nail to bring better housing and jobs to the Mexican immigrant community of San Antonio, TX.  These men saw the need for the Hispanic/ Mexican/ Chicano communities to have priests chosen from among them and encouraged “native” vocations.  Most members of PADRES could say that they owed their vocation to one of these “Anglo” priests.

ELEMENT 2: Sentiment that unless organized action is taken, the grief will continue; emotional involvement in form of anger over injustice; hope that things could get better with struggle.

QUESTION 2: Was there hope, and what gave you hope?  (Vatican II?)  Was there anger over injustice?  Did you feel that unless you do something this stuff would continue?  

Although the PADRES members felt the need to have Hispanics (Mexicans/ Chicanos/ Puerto Ricans/ Central Americans, etc.) represented in the hierarchy of the Church in the U. S., nevertheless their focus was on “secular” affairs.  The analysis they did made it clear that there were important economic interests that were intent on exploiting the minority and immigrant population.  They joined the efforts of Cesar Chavez to organize the migrant farm workers in California and South Texas and similar efforts to organize in the Midwest.  They joined with other Catholics (like Msgr. Jack Egan of Chicago and Gino Baroni of Washington DC) in pressuring the U. S. bishops to set up the Campaign for Human Development so that church money could be made available to support organizing efforts to overcome situations of injustice.  PADRES early formed alliances and coalitions with other groups fighting for justice such as the Protestant group headed by Dr. Jorge Lara-Braud in Texas and the National Federation of Priests Councils (NFPC) which was a national organization of priests from all over the United States who wanted to promote the ideas of Vatican II.  There were also conversations and mutual support of Chicano organizations like The Brown Berets, the Raza Unida Party, the Southwest Voter Registration Project (SVRP), the Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), and Catolicos por la Raza of Los Angeles.  The idea was to join together the efforts being made by young Chicanos in civil society with the efforts being made from within the Church clergy ranks to challenge and promote a change of economic and political structures.   Most of the PADRES members (priests and brothers) were personal friends with Chicano activists.

(Richard eventually obtained his Ph.D. and published his dissertation.)

* * * * * * * *

GRAND COTEAU ~ Father Edmundo Rodriguez, SJ, died Oct. 28, in Opelousas, La. He was 82 years old (1953-2017), a Jesuit for 64 years and a priest for 51 years.

A man of compassion and action, his Jesuit brothers will celebrate his life in a Mass of Christian Burial at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 31 in the St. Charles College Chapel in Grand Coteau, La. A visitation will be held immediately beforehand at 10:00 a.m. on Oct. 31 in the same chapel. Burial will be in the Jesuit Cemetery at St. Charles College, following the funeral Mass. 

He was born in El Paso, Texas, on Feb. 18, 1953, to Edmundo Rodriguez and Ignacia Escajeda Rodriguez, who predeceased him. He is survived by his sisters, Sr. Elisa Rodriguez, Susana Marquez, Aurora Powell, Rebecca Ballon and Gloria Rodriguez and his brothers, Guillermo Rodriguez and Jaime Rodriguez.

After graduating from Bowie High School in El Paso, he entered the Society of Jesus on Aug. 14, 1953, at St. Charles College in Grand Coteau. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 7, 1966, at Holy Name of Jesus Church in New Orleans and pronounced final vows in El Paso on New Year’s Day 1978.

After his ordination n 1966, served at Our Lady’s Youth Center in El Paso in its ministry with the poor. He helped start a program to support local high school graduates enrolled in college. Finding that street children from Juarez were sleeping in the dumpster behind the Center and on the roof of the parish rectory, he began working with other religious leaders to find ways to get food and shelter for them. Daily, he walked the streets, visited people in the tenements and said Masses there. 

When he was re-assigned to Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Antonio in 1968, this early experience influenced his approach to ministry: attentiveness to local needs, direct contact with people, and action to help meet those needs. He served at Our Lady of Guadalupe for 12 years (1968-80) as pastoral associate, administrator, pastor, and Jesuit superior. He helped to establish PADRES (Padres Asociados para Derechos Religiosos, Educationales, y Sociales), the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC), and C.O.P.S. (Communities Organized for Public Service).

In 1980, he moved to New Orleans as pastoral assistant to the provincial. In this role, he was instrumental in bringing men from the New Orleans Province to work in the Province of Paraguay. 
He became provincial of the New Orleans Province in 1983. As provincial, he participated in the Society of Jesus’ General Congregation 33, which elected Peter-Hans Kolvenbach as superior general. Later, following his term as provincial, he was asked to accompany Fr. General Kolvenbach to El Salvador when the General traveled there following the murders of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter.

He served for three years as academic dean at Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, Texas, before becoming superior and director of the Jesuit Spirituality Center in Grand Coteau (1993-1999). While there, he also began working with the National Catholic Council on Hispanic Ministry, a leadership program for young Hispanic Catholic leaders from dioceses around the USA.

After a year at St. Rita Parish in Dallas, he was named pastor and Jesuit superior at Immaculate Conception Parish in Albuquerque, N.M. (2000-2008). 

He then served as a retreat and spiritual director at Montserrat Retreat House in Lake Dallas, Texas (2009-2015). He provided direction in Spanish and, with his pastoral experience, provided understanding support to the local clergy.
He was missioned to the St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Pavilion in Grand Coteau in 2015. He continued helping with retreats and other endeavors until this past summer when a fall required him to move to a rehabilitation center.

In all he did, he was much beloved for his warmth, kindness, keen intelligence, and sense of humor. He always had a joke, often corny, and frequently enlivened meetings with his guitar and humorous songs. 

He earned a B.A. in education and master’s degree in philosophy from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. He did graduate studies in Romance Languages at the University of Texas at Austin. He studied theology at St. Mary’s College in St. Marys, Kansas, earning the S.T.L. (1967). Prior to his ordination, he taught for one year at Jesuit High in Tampa, FL (1960-61) and two years at Jesuit High in New Orleans. 

Memorial gifts may be made to the USA Central and Southern Province of the Society of Jesus at 4511 West Pine Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108 or online at http://jesuitscentralsouthern.org.

St. Charles College 
313 E Martin Luther King Dr. 
Grand Coteau, Louisiana 70541 

SERVICES

Mass

Tuesday, October 31, 2017 
11:00 AM