A Sense of Place – SAINT JOHN’S OF COLLEGEVILLE

Saint John’s University Press (1987)

 

EUGENE J. MCCARTHY

 

WHEN I ATTENDED SAINT JOHN'S UNIVERSITY in the thirties, the core curriculum and its underlying base was liberal arts; although for practical purposes, courses directed towards pro­fessional degrees in law, medicine, engineering and the like from other schools were also offered. The curriculum also made some conces­sions to the newer fields of social science, economics, political science and to courses in education, adequate to prepare one to qualify as a teacher in the State of Minnesota.

The coming together of faculty, students and school in central Min­nesota was the result of what appears to be almost random historical forces, possibly accidents. It grew out of a Benedictine base established in 1856 when one Benedictine priest, two clerics and two brothers arrived in Minnesota Territory under the auspices of Bishop Cretin of St. Paul. The population of the territory was growing rapidly as "Yankees" (as Protestants from the New England states-German and Irish-were called), evidently expecting statehood to be granted to the territory, moved in. In 1854 the population of the territory was estimated at 32,000; by 1857 it had increased to over 150,000.

The prime mover behind the movement of Benedictines to Min­nesota was a Benedictine monk, eventually abbot, named Boniface Wimmer. He obtained money from Ludwig, King of Bavaria, whose agency of religious propagation was known as the Ludwig Mis­sionsverein. The Ludwig association was, and possibly still is, re­called by irreverent students with some knowledge of the school's history with the cry uttered in desperate athletic situations, "Vin von for Ludwig!" Wimmer's compelling appeal to Ludwig was that the 20,000 German Catholics in Minnesota at that time had only 12 priests. He wrote, "Without doubt many of our Catholic countrymen, as elsewhere, will succumb to the Methodist sect if they do not soon receive spiritual leadership and protection."

Neither Wimmer's nor Ludwig's conception of the Methodist threat has been recorded. In any case the Methodist threat continued, and was noted by the Dean of Saint John's nearly one hundred years later in reflecting on reasons why good Catholic basketball players, or Catholic good basketball players, would go to Hamline Univer­sity when Saint John's could never put together a basketball team. Hamline, a Methodist college in Minnesota, was one of the first small colleges to have a nationally recognized basketball team.

Without buildings or faculty or prospect of students, the Benedic­tines in 1857 petitioned the Minnesota Territorial Legislature for a university charter. A similar charter had been granted to the ever-present Methodists a few years earlier. After a bitter partisan fight, the Republicans-largely Protestant, supported by the Know-Nothings-opposed the charter and the Democrats-largely Catholic, Germans and Irish-supported it. The charter was ap­proved in March of 1857 ... and so it began.

By the mid-thirties the student population of Saint John's was about 450. It was in that decade that the college began to take on a distinc­tive character, largely through the direction and inspiration of one of the monks, Fr. Virgil Michel, O.S.B.

Fr. Virgil was a person of broad, one might say almost universal, interests although his most concentrated thought was given to the role of the Benedictine monastery and school in religion, education and social reform. At the time of his death, at age 48 in 1938, he had set in motion or aided and advanced three significant programs. One, known as the Liturgical Movement, was essentially religious­ – theological at base – but growing from that through sacramentalism, symbolism, worship and the relationship between life and worship. It was altogether a sophisticated, an historically advanced applica­tion of the Benedictine commitment to worship and work, not as separable, but as the essence of the creative or re-creative role of man.

The second area of his concern, not necessarily in order of impor­tance as he probably would have rated education after worship and religion in terms of importance, was social action. Positively his concern moved the school and the monastery to a deep and continuing concern for social justice, the dominant concept of Catholic and also of Christian emphasis in the thirties. The two great papal encyclicals, Rerum Noaarum (Leo XIII) issued in 1891, and Quadragesimo Anno (Pius XI) issued 40 years later, covered the breadth and depth of the meaning of social justice.

If the New Deal had sought a religio-philosophical justification for its pragmatic political proposals, it could have found an adequate base in the encyclicals. Although the school itself was isolated from serious social problems, physically or geographically, it was not isolated intellectually. The immediate and local efforts were evident in the school's support for rural cooperatives, concern for agricultural economics-especially through the involvement of a young monk, Professor Martin Schirber, O.S.B. Support was also evidenced through the popularity of the Catholic Rural Life Movement and its leader, Monsignor Luigi Ligutti, whose great initial effort was to integrate the coal mining industry, if it could be called that, of Granger, Iowa, with agriculture. He moved from that to leadership in international agricultural policy and programs, and as adviser to popes, finally to a house on the Appian Way. The last time I saw him, at the Rome airport, I asked, "Monsignor, is it a long way from Granger, Iowa, to the Appian Way?" He answered, "No," and raised his eyebrows.

"Distributive justice" was the controlling and directing intellec­tual concept of the day. It was a concept of dimensions and defini­tion, in contrast with current terminology which is either too specific or too quantitative.

We met Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, the apostles to the poor, preaching in a kind of second coming the "gospel to the rich," neither distinguishing among the deserving and the undeserving poor, a distinction which can be made among the rich. I remember Dorothy for many things, but most of all for a remark attributed to her when, during extremely cold weather in New York, the Mott Street quarters were heated, minimally, by turning on the gas oven and opening the door. When someone observed that this was a very expensive and inefficient way to heat an apartment, Dorothy commented, "The poor are never economical."

We also met the Baroness Catherine de Hueck, who led another group concerned about the poor-especially blacks-in an organiza­tion called Friendship House. The Baroness startled the monks in one of her lectures, possibly the last one she gave on campus, in describing the coming of the revolution as including monks hang­ing like dead crows from the telephone and electricity poles all along the 12 mile highway from the monastery to the city of St. Cloud.

The bridging or tying together of religion and social action, Fr. Virgil saw, had to be a liberal education. As early as 1926 he had formulated his idea of higher education both in terms of subject matter and method. He discussed with the Chicago Great Books sponsor, Mortimer Adler, the possibility of a Great Books program at Saint John's. A clearly defined Great Books program was never established, but the discussion and anticipation did influence teaching at Saint John's and sharpened and deepened the liberal education, which was already in place under Benedictine tradition. No serious student of either philosophy or political science could escape Aristotle or Plato, the political philosophers of the Enlightenment, or the Federalist Papers. Nor were the modern philosophers neglected in the courses in metaphysics, epistemology and cosmology of Fr. Ernest Kilzer, O.S.B., although the core of teaching was Thomistic. Greek was a re­quirement along with Latin, classical as well as medieval, for the pre­divinity students. There was a carry-over to non-clerical students. The burden of classical education was carried in the history courses, principally through the work of one monk, Fr. Walter Reger, O.S.B., as well as in the English department. Fr. Walter was the consummate historian. Time ran together in his classrooms. It took little imagina­tion to see him presiding, or participating, at a meeting-preferably social-of persons from every historical period. The kings he knew well, as well as the popes.

One of his continuing concerns was the dissatisfaction of students and monks with the college and monastic food service. He noted that throughout the history of the Benedictine Order, going back to the 5th century, monks had gone on record as unhappy over the food they were served. The protest continued in his time. Fr. Walter con­cerned himself with the menu; with the kitchen; with the cooks. He surmised that a surprise, say strawberries in February, might dampen criticism for six weeks or so, and so might corn on the cob out of season. On hearing that food is a major concern to crews of submarines and that submariners are kept satisfied on long underwater duty principally by good food, he looked into menus and food ser­vices of the Navy, on the assumption, it seemed, that life in a monastery or in a monastic school especially in winter, might be com­parable to life beneath the surface of the sea.

The classical strength of the English department rested not on one professor but on a trinity. Fr. Rembert Bularzik, O.S.B., was a great disciplinarian and proponent of the thoughts of Cardinal Newman. Fr. Rembert's family name was an unlikely name for a Newman devotee, but such he was. Even students who did not take classes in Newman from Rembert were aware of Newman, of The Idea of a University, and could not be unaware of Newman's definition of a gentleman. All of this was in Stearns County, Minnesota, possibly the most German county in the United States.

The second of the trio (not necessarily in order of importance) was Fr. Conrad Diekmann, O.S.B. There was no field of literature in which he was not interested, but Shakespeare and the period of the growth of the English language – just preceding Shakespeare – ­seemed to be his special love. I recall especially his readings of Old English, of Beowulf, of Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman and of Chaucer. When I last saw him, shortly before his death, I asked him what he was reading. He said, "Mostly Rex Stout."

I was reminded of Conrad regularly, possibly annually, when in the United States Senate, on receiving inquiries from publishing associations as to what two or three books I had found most profitable or most useful or even most satisfying during the preceding year. I always listed The Vision of Piers Plowman as one of them, having in mind two quotations especially applicable to politics. The first,

Then high in the air an angel from heaven

Spoke loudly in Latin, that laymen might never

Either judge or justify or object to opinions,

But suffer and serve.

- a most useful response to members of the Senate who would often introduce their remarks or arguments by saying "speaking as a lawyer," or "thinking as a lawyer," as though they spoke with special knowledge. A second quotation from Langland with obvious political application in times when courage is lacking but advice is plentiful, occurs in the Vision when the matter of belling a cat is discussed by rats and mice.

A rat of renown, a ready speaker, had proposed the belling .... The rabble of rats thought his reasons clever; but when the bell was brought and bound to the collar, there was not a rat in all the rout for the realm of Louis who dared not bind the bell about the cat's shoulders nor had it on the cat's head to win all England. The third person in the English department Trinity was Fr. Dunstan Tucker, O.S.B. He was, in addition to being professor of English, the college baseball coach. He had no doubts about my ability to play first base but occasionally showed less than full faith in my hitting ability. Usually he had me batting low in the line-up, seventh or eighth, despite a slugging average that was well above my batting average. In comparable manner, he thought that I was better as a reader, or as a student of English literature, than a writer. I disagreed with him less on the second count than on the first. These differences were minor. In both the fields of English and baseball, we had a long association in common effort, appreciation and understanding.

If Fr. Dunstan was intolerant, it was of two things-stupidity and bad form, especially if they occurred together, either on the baseball diamond or in the field of scholarship or literature. He taught two memorable courses, one on "The Novel," and the other on Dante. For some reason, scheduling problems as I recall, I missed the Dante course. But to miss the formal course was not to miss knowing Fr. Dunstan's commitment to Dante, or to escape his teachings. He lived to be over 80 years old and continued his interest in the poet and was pleased a few years ago when I told him of a statement of a priest, as quoted by William Butler Yeats, to the end that his (the priest's) book of prayer and meditation was a "Dante bound in black."

The course on the novel was one of another order, one of delight. Of Hemingway, Fr. Dunstan would say, "For lack of experience, I cannot say that he has written well of all that he has written about, but he surely can describe the effects of a good drink of whiskey." He covered all the writers with a sure touch: the Americans Dreiser and Faulkner; the Russians Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky; and Sigrid Undset. This to the point where one of the baseball pitchers, who had little interest in literature but was so moved by his coach's interest, resolved to read Kristin Laaransdatter, "30 pages a day." He was a very orderly and disciplined young man who would put the book down after he had finished the daily 30 pages even though he had only a page or two to go to the end of the chapter or, possibly, even to the end of the book. His pitches lacked variety.

At last the course got down to what it was really about, the Don Quixote of Cervantes. All that had gone before was not undone, but it was certainly preparatory. Fr. Dunstan was so pleased with the book that he found it difficult to talk about it as he did of other novels or to subject it to any scholarly analysis. It was as though he feared that analysis or too much discussion would somehow leave the book dishonored.

Fr. Ernest Kilzer, O.S.B., dominated the philosophy department. He was heavy into metaphysics and epistemology, but cosmology seemed to be his favorite field of study and reflection, especially evi­dent in his inquiries into "time" and "space." He could have explained the theory of time espoused by George Allen, the long-time successful coach of the Washington Redskins football team, who declared, "The future is now," as Aristotelian. And so too, to the radio and television industry, which not only classifies time as "prime," "choice," and "good"-classifications incidentally also used in the evaluation of beef-but also which identifies time as "unique," and which "sells" time; something that previously could only be lost, found, wasted, saved or borrowed, released and served.

Fr. Ernest found no problems with Einstein's relativity or the in­determinacy of Heisenberg's theory ... and had he been present at the trials of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, could quite possibly have saved one from conviction and the other from the stake.

In any case, after taking courses from Fr. Ernest one would not, in Malthusian spirit, easily dismiss any historical problem in­volving persons by saying "It is a population problem," or escape responsibility for judgment and for action by saying "everything is relative" -he would ask "to what?" -or by designating any theory of economic determinism as "communistic" or "capitalistic."

In times of need-sometimes for serious application, sometimes in self defense, or possibly, merely to show off-a general liberal education and, more particularly, the philosophy courses of Fr. Ernest can prove useful ... as when Henry Kissinger was asked whether he looked upon himself as Secretary of State as a modern or reborn Metternich, he said that he was not Metternich come back, but a combination of Spinoza and Immanuel Kant; prompting one to speculate on what one might expect from a Secretary of State who was a pantheist with a categorical imperative.

There were other monks, brothers, teachers-both lay and clerical-all deserving of note and of record . . . . I leave them to others-like Fr. Alfred Deutsch, O.S.B.