 |
About Woodstock | Programs | Publications | Search |
By Walter J. Burghardt, S.J.
[Woodstock Report, December 1992, no. 32]
The following is a homily given on August 21, 1967, at the Funeral Mass of John Courtney
Murray, S.J., at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City by Walter J.
Burghardt, S.J., founder and director of Woodstock's "Preaching
the Just Word" project. We publish it here as a memorial tribute to Father
Murray, public philosopher and theologian at Woodstock College, on the 25th anniversary of
his death. (Reprinted with permission from America, 106 West 56th Street, New York,
New York 10019, September 9, 1967, pp. 248-249, with a small number of stylistic changes
by the author.)
How does one recapture sixty-three years? How do you bring to life a man who taught with distinction in the Ivy League and on the banks of the Patapsco; who served country and Church in Washington and Rome; who graced the platform of so many American campuses and was honored with degrees by nineteen; who researched theology and law, philosophy and war; who was consulted "from the top" on the humanities and national defense, on Christian unity and the new atheism, on democratic institutions and social justice; whose name is synonymous with Catholic intellectualism and the freedom of the human person; whose mind could soar to outer space without leaving our shabby earth; whose life was a living symbol of faith, of hope, of love?
How does one recapture John Courtney Murray? No one really recaptures him for another. Each man or woman whose life he touched, each one of you, has his or her own Murray-for-remembrance. As for me, leafing through the last third of those sixty-three years, I remember a mind, a manner, a man.
I. I remember a mind. Few men or women have wedded such broad knowledge with such deep insight. Few scholars can rival Father Murray's possession of a total tradition and his ability to tune it in on the contemporary experience. For, whether immersed in Trinitarian theology or human rights, he reflected the concerns of one of his heroes, the first remarkable Christian thinker, the third-century Origen. He realized with a rare perceptiveness that for Christians to grow into an intelligent Christianity, intelligence itself must grow in them. And so his own intellectual life reproduced the four stages he found in Origen.
First, recognition of the rights of reason, awareness of the thrilling fact that the Word did not become flesh to destroy what was human but to perfect it. Second, the acquisition of knowledge, a sweepingly vast knowledge, the sheer materials for one's contemplation, for one's ultimate vision of the real. Third, the indispensable task that is Christian criticism: to confront the old with the new, to link the highest flights of reason to God's self-disclosure, to communicate the insight of Clement of Alexandria that Father Murray loved so dearly: "There is but one river of truth, but many streams fall into it on this side and on that." And fourth, an intelligent love: love of truth wherever it is to be found, and a burning yearning to include all the scattered fragments of discovered truth under the one God, and under Christ.
The results, as you know, were quite astonishing. Not in an ivory tower, but in the blood and bone of human living. Unborn millions will never know how much their freedom is tied to this man whose pen was a powerful protest, a dramatic march, against injustice and inequality, whose research sparked and terminated in the ringing affirmation of an ecumenical council: "The right to religious freedom has its foundation" not in the Church, not in society or state, not even in objective truth, but "in the very dignity of the human person." Unborn millions will never know how much the civilized dialogue they take for granted between Christian and Christian, between Christian and Jew, between Christian and unbeliever, was made possible by this man whose life was a civilized conversation. Untold Catholics will never sense that they live so gracefully in this dear land because John Murray showed so persuasively that the American proposition is quite congenial to the Catholic reality.
II. With the mind went the manner. What John Murray said or did, he said or did with "style." I mean, the how was perfectly proportioned to the what. There was a Murray style. It stemmed, I think, from a singular feeling for the sacredness of words, the sacredness of things, the sacredness of persons. How fresh syllables sounded when his rich voice proclaimed them, even when he changed the Church-State issue into the "ecclesiastico-political problematic." How fascinating a problem proved as he probed surgeon-like for its heart, from the Law and the Prophets he plumbed so profoundly to the latest experience of contemporary man and woman. How dear human beings became while he fathomed the four bases on which a people must be built: truth, justice, love, and freedom.
Each of you has his or her private memory of the Murray manner. How your heart leaped when he smiled at you; how your thoughts took wing when he lectured to you; how good the "little people" felt when he spoke to you. How natural it all sounded when he ordered a "Beefeater Martini desperately dry." How uplifted you felt when he left you with "Courage, Walter! It's far more important than intelligence." How the atmosphere changed when he entered a room: it was warm, electric, somehow bigger. How he spoke first and softly to you, not because you were colored, but because you were his friend, or because you were a stranger, or because you were human. For, as his Jewish secretary put it, all you had to be was a human being and he respected you, even loved you.
Each of you has his or her memory of the Murray manner. How aloof he seemed, when he was really only shy, terribly shy. How sensitive to your hurt, how careful not to wound, with his paradoxical belief, "A gentleman is never rude save intentionally." How courteous he was, especially if you were young, just beginning, fumbling for the answer or even for the question. How gentle he was, as only the strong tested by fire can be gentle. How firm and outgoing his handclasp, his whole self given for this moment to you only. How open he was, to people and ideas, as only one "who lives with wisdom" can be open. How stubborn and unbending, once the demands of truth or justice or love or freedom were transparent.
How rhythmic he was, on the public platform and the private links. How serene, in delicate dialogue and mid the threat of a world's destruction. How priestly in every gesture, a mediator between God and us, not only at the altar (so warm and majestic) but in the day-to-day encounter with the learned and the illiterate, with the powerful and the impotent, with those for whom God is a living reality and those for whom God is dead. How delighted he could be with the paradoxes of life, as when the Unitarians honored this professional Trinitarian. How the laughter lit his eyes when he recalled that during the Rome discussions on religious freedom "Michael Cardinal Browne proved more unsinkable than his famous Irish cousin Molly." And how confident he looked as he predicted that the post-conciliar experience of the Church would parallel the experience of the bishops in council: we will begin with a good deal of uncertainty and confusion, must therefore pass through a period of crisis and tension, but can expect to end with a certain measure of light and of joy.
III. The captivating thing is, the manner was the man. As the mind was the man. Here was no pose, no sheerly academic exercise. In his professional, academic, intellectual life, he lived the famous paragraph of Aquinas: "There are two ways of desiring knowledge. One way is to desire it as a perfection of oneself; and that is the way philosophers desire it. The other way of desiring knowledge is to desire it not simply as a perfection of oneself, but because through this knowledge the one we love becomes present to us; and this is the way saints desire it." Through Father Murray's knowledge, the persons he loved, a triune God and a host of humans, became present to him.
The mind and the manner were the man. A man of warm affections and deep loves. In love with God, in love with humans, in love with life. It is this that explains his joy in human living: at his desk or at an altar, on the lecture platform or in the home of a friend. It is this, I think, that explains his agony in the period of suspicion, agony not because he had been rebuked, not because the underground was active again, but because he knew then what most Catholics know only now, that he was right; because he knew that human beings would go on suffering needlessly, unjustly, as long as the Church did not say flatly and unequivocally what she in fact says now: religious freedom is a human right.
John Courtney Murray was the embodiment of the Christian humanist, in whom an aristocracy of the mind was wedded to a democracy of love. Whoever we are, Christian or non-Christian, believer or atheist, this tall man has made it quite difficult for any of us who loved him to ever again be small, to ever again make the world and human persons revolve around our selfish selves. We have been privileged indeed: we have known and loved the genuine Christian, the one "who lives with wisdom."
Dear friends of Father Murray: On this questionnaire for Woodstock's forthcoming evaluation by the Middle States Association and the American Association of Theological Schools, Father Murray listed the two lines of research in which he was currently engaged: (1) the problem of contemporary atheism; (2) a Trinitarian conception of the state of grace. In his mind the two areas were not segregated. For the twin poles of his life were the human and the divine, the heady synthesis of his beloved Aquinas: God's secret life, man and woman as they come forth from God, woman and man as they return to God through Christ.
Through Christ, this man of God, this human among humans, has returned to God. It should be an intriguing return, especially if, as I suspect, there is a Jesuit named Weigel waiting in the wings. For sheer knowledge and love, the dialogue, or trialogue, may well be unique.