Column
Chill that surrounded the Crowleys finally
melting in Patty's scrapbook
By TIM UNSWORTH
About six weeks before he died in November 1996, Cardinal Joseph
Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago, called Patty Crowley and asked if he could
come over for a visit.
Already under a death sentence from cancer of the pancreas and
tormented by a painful stenosis of his spine, the cardinal walked alone the few
blocks to Patty's 88th floor apartment in the John Hancock building. Unlike
other prelates, Bernardin rarely moved in a posse. He didn't feel that he
needed toadies at his side to provide deniability.
"He knocked on the door, came in and sat on one of the couches
just like you and [Tim's wife] Jean do when you visit," Patty said. "He stayed
for just over an hour, and I can't remember a thing he said.
"We talked about the Birth Control Commission (The Commission for
Studies on Problems of Population and Birth Control, initiated by John XXIII
and developed by Paul VI) and the encyclical (Humanae Vitae, 1968)," she
continued. "I guess I talked most of the time. I just wanted to say that the
Birth Control Commission did not promote birth control. It simply said that it
was not intrinsically evil."
The cardinal listened. He had written to Patty some months after
his arrival in Chicago in 1982. It was his response to her letter in which she
traced the hurt she and her late husband, Pat, had suffered after the
encyclical appeared.
At that time, Bernardin had written a carefully worded letter,
pointing out that he wasn't a bishop during the period in which the commission
was meeting. It was more political than pastoral, but Bernardin, in the years
that followed, changed.
Patty and Pat Crowley had called upon Chicago's Cardinal Albert
Meyer when they were appointed to the commission by Paul VI in 1964. "Go
ahead," he said. "But it won't make any difference."
He was right. The majority report of the commission, which called
for a re-examination of the teaching on birth control, was never even
distributed. Two years after the close of the commission's fourth meeting, the
Crowleys were awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a reporter's phone call asking their
reaction to Humanae Vitae. The Crowleys never heard from the Vatican
again. In that league, even thank-you notes can be suspect.
After the commission finished its work, the Crowleys wrote to
Meyer's successor, Cardinal John Patrick Cody. He never responded.
Following Bernardin's death, Patty presented his successor,
Cardinal Francis George, with a copy of Robert McClory's 1995 book, Turning
Point, that chronicled the commission's work. "I have your book," he told
Crowley, "and I don't agree with it."
Then he walked away.
Patty Crowley had run into a wall, one that separated those who
used the law as a guide from those whose religion is based on the commandment
of love. For the past 30 years, she has listened for even the mildest sound of
support from the church she loves. Instead, she has heard only soul-drying
silence or bitter criticism.
Bernardin, in Crowley's living room, listened with pastoral ears.
"Let's pray for each other," he said. Then he embraced her and walked to the
elevator.
Recently, a bishop's diocesan newspaper termed Crowley, who just
turned 85, "a very old degenerate" who roamed about "promoting sexual
immorality." It echoed the thinking of Fabian Bruskewitz, bishop of Lincoln,
Neb., an ecclesiastical Captain Ahab who specializes in harpooning minnows. It
was typical of the paranoid style now infecting the church.
Pat and Patty Crowley were the founding couple of the Christian
Family Movement, which grew out of a number of Catholic Action groups operating
in the mid-1940s. The Crowleys' charismatic leadership so dominated the
movement that they became known as "Mr. and Mrs. CFM." In seven years alone
(1949-1956), membership increased to 20,000 couples.
According to Jeffrey M. Burns, archivist for the San Francisco
archdiocese, the movement enjoyed remarkable success during the 1950s, peaking
in 1963. Membership has declined, but it continues to exist, enjoying renewed
success among Spanish-speaking groups and acting as a booster shot to other
groups such as the Cana Conference and Marriage Encounter.
Patty Crowley gave birth to six children; four survived. The
Crowleys had at least a dozen foster children and opened their home to nearly
40 foreign students. They traveled the world, helping to establish the
International Christian Family Movement.
Following the release of Humanae Vitae, the clergy closed
ranks and stopped speaking about birth control altogether. They also stopped
talking to the Crowleys. Even sympathy might be viewed as support, and that
could short circuit a career.
Pat Crowley died in 1974. Years later, Patty wrote an article for
NCR, presenting her reflections on the experiences with the commission.
She received letters from priests warning her that she was going to hell.
Although the commission was unanimous in its recommendations to Paul VI, it was
the Crowleys who were shunned like E-coli.
In the years since Pat's death, Patty has been involved in many
projects. She founded a women's discussion group. With her daughter Patricia, a
Benedictine nun, she founded a shelter for homeless and abused women. She is a
Communion minister at Northwestern Hospital and a lector in her parish. Now
hobbled by two hip replacements, she continues to serve the church with love
and compassion, although she feels terribly distanced at times -- perhaps as
Bernardin felt toward the end of his life. Living the Beatitudes can run
counter to church politics.
Patty Crowley worships at Holy Name Cathedral, where she met Pat
in 1934 and where they were married in 1937. But the parish priests and the
half dozen or so in residence have never said a word to her about the birth
control prohibition or Bruskewitz's lunatic insult.
Following the appearance of the Lincoln gibe, she received
innumerable letters of support from across the country and overseas. When the
number began to grow, she placed them in a scrapbook that Jean and I reviewed
during a joyful evening with her.
With characteristic humor, she had copied the definition of
"degenerate" from a dictionary and pasted it on the opening page of her
scrapbook. The book will eventually go to the archives at the University of
Notre Dame, where it will bear witness to a woman's greatness and a bishop's
pettiness.
Three of the letters were from bishops, two of them retired and
one an auxiliary. One episcopal letter was actually a copy of a letter written
to Bruskewitz, chiding him for his insensitivity. (Allegedly, the retired
auxiliary received a bitter reply.) The active auxiliary seemed embarrassed by
the Lincoln don's brutishness. He apologized for the hurt Fabian Bruskewitz had
caused.
The third letter came from a retired archbishop. One could almost
hear it weeping.
There were letters from priests, mostly those who had known Patty
from her CFM days. (The Christian Family Movement had a profound influence on
its priests. Of the nine priests who served as area chaplains, eight have
resigned from active ministry and are married.)
Included in the scrapbook were copies of letters written to
Bruskewitz. He had one of his subordinates respond with undisguised sarcasm.
"Your letter will get all the attention it deserves," the response said. And
then the subordinate promised prayers. It was enough to physic a goat.
One priest challenged the bishop to admit that he had written the
response himself. Could be. The word linkages in the question and answer column
sound like him.
The letters from lay people were from a mix of close friends and
total strangers. Some were addressed directly to Bruskewitz and were biting and
furious. The bishops and clergy who, by their silence, supported Bishop
Bruskewitz should read the letters. It could be a lesson to them on how much
genuine anger is out there. It illustrates perfectly the widening gap between
the teaching church and the believing church.
Other letters were wonderfully humorous, reminders that the only
authority the church has is the authority we give it. They acted as a booster
shot to Patty's weary soul, a remembrance of things past.
Perhaps the thin response from priests could be explained by the
fact that those of the Crowleys' generation are now in their graves or are
waiting for God. Perhaps, like Patty, they are simply weary. Their plows have
been dulled by the same rocks placed in their paths.
There were calls. One group suggested that Patty join them in
picketing an episcopal ordination ceremony for a new Chicago auxiliary.
Bruskewitz was scheduled to attend, and they wanted to dent his hide. Patty
demurred. Not her style.
She continues to receive letters, one or two each day. Like the
thousands of letters Bernardin received during his final illness, they spelled
the significant difference between the pastoral and the political.
I have this fantasy: It's about the distant future and a priest
named Mary, a bishop's daughter, who has just been named pastor of the Catholic
community of Ss. Patrick and Patricia Crowley in the Chicago archdiocese. She
is reviewing a history of the Catholic church in America when she discovers the
now-titular diocese of Lincoln, Neb., which folded when everyone was
excommunicated for one infraction or another, mostly for practicing birth
control, a heinous practice they had been engaging in for decades. The diocese
appears only as a footnote. The long dead bishop's name is misspelled.
Tim Unsworth writes from Chicago where he awaits ecclesiastical
censure for his failure to give "firm and definitive assent" to most
everything. To insult him, contact unsworth@megsinet.net
National Catholic Reporter, August 14,
1998
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