Letter to a student
Dunne, George H.
Letter to a student GEORGE H. DUNNE DEAR WALLY, At long last I shall attempt to reply to the questions you put to me many months ago. I think you understand that the long delay was the consequence...
...but always eventually felt driven to return...
...God joined himself to human nature in the person of Jesus Christ...
...I have never told anyone of this experience, not even my mother...
...A wild exaggeration, of course, but I must confess it gave me a warm feeling to know that I was not completely forgotten...
...The scientist alone in his laboratory may serve Christ by extending the frontiers of human knowledge...
...What a marvel am I!" From his lowest to his highest functions, from the organs that control the digestive system to the human brain, what a marvel is man...
...So they wondered why I not only remained in the priesthood, the Jesuit order, and the church, but why, as in the case of Paul Blanshard, I defended the church against her critics...
...In those days the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco was equivalent in terms of traversability to two or three thousand miles...
...If I were asked: how does one who does not believe find meaning in life, I would simply have to answer: I don't know...
...This may sound like a paradox, but in fact it seems to me that the credulous person is the unbeliever...
...I accept that...
...I tried to explain what had happened...
...Every morning the sparrows come to my window-sill-they are there now-for the crumbs of cheese and bread I leave for them...
...I was on a competitive level with the best of my classmates, several of whom later became members of the bench and one a member of the California Supreme Court...
...One may say, of course, that this is all the result of an evolutionary force...
...When I lived in Arizona I used on occasion to drive up one of the local mountains and sit in the car looking out and down upon the utter silence and stillness of the desert in which I seemed to feel the presence of God...
...One may say that the argument from order in the universe is not a conclusive proof of the existence of God...
...All this time I had been praying, first for grace to do what I wanted to do and then for grace to choose between alternatives proposed by me...
...What marvels are they...
...It is a matter of faith and this was, as it were, born with me...
...And so to your questions...
...At least at the last moment I cannot but recognize that this world 'which was made by him' is marvelous...
...And in the springtime to watch them feeding their young, first in the nest and then teaching them to fly with them to my window-sill to be fed...
...This is a problem which philosophers of all beliefs and unbeliefs have wrestled with since man first began to ponder the ultimate questions...
...I am skeptical in the face of such a claim...
...when I reflect upon the wonders of space and its galaxies, I find that I am insufficiently credulous to believe that all this is the result of mere chance, that there is no intelligence behind it...
...A pioneer supporter of civil rights efforts, in 1945 he wrote "the Sin of Segregation," one of the most widely reprinted articles Commonweal ever published...
...I have simply tried to answer your questions about my belief and my life...
...But I also believe that its purpose was to make it possible for man to know the unknowable, to express the inexpressible, to attain the unattainable, through Jesus Christ...
...It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do...
...I could not tell their writer the real reason, which he would not have understood, and which was quite simply the experience I have tried to describe...
...Altogether apart from the ordinary struggles associated with any effort to lead a celibate life, my life as a Jesuit, apart from the early and now the twilight years, has been a turbulent one...
...Everything has been gift, everything has been grace-Despite its pains, its obscure mysteries, its sufferings, its inevitable decay, this mortal life is something very beautiful, a prodigy always original and moving, an event which deserves to be chanted in joy and glory: life, the life of man...
...Behind life, behind nature, behind the universe, there is intelligence, and then, I say it in this adieu (because it is You who have revealed it to us, Lord) there is Love...
...Once more I changed the petition, adding as an alternative possibility staying in Los Angeles, keeping the newspaper and practicing law at the same time...
...I have admitted that the path has been strewn with failures and infidelities...
...Paul, neither superiors, bishops, or cardinals, have managed to raise a doubt in my mind that this is what God wanted me to do, however badly I have done it...
...I could not continue with the prayer...
...I have said before that faith hinges upon what one believes about Jesus Christ...
...The other had replied: "Why, that's the man who started the Black Revolution...
...The chief one, not insolvable, was that at the time I was, with another young man, co-owner, publisher, and editor of a weekly community newspaper in Los Angeles...
...The third motor is dead...
...God knows, the multitude of our sins clamors for redemption...
...I thought, what a marvel is sex...
...Not everyone obviously is called to follow Christ in the same way...
...I had, however, always maintained the habit formed in childhood no matter what the hour or the misdeeds of the night of kneeling down before going to bed and reciting some prayers...
...But, as I see it, the faith required to believe that these marvels are the result of blind chance is far greater than the faith required to believe in the existence of God...
...I said: "I'll do it...
...I was not notably religious...
...On the other hand, the Nation was familiar with some of the troubles I had had with superiors, bishops, and cardinals, to say nothing of racists and motion picture producers...
...but I have also said that one of the purposes of the Incarnation was to make him knowable through Jesus Christ...
...Some twenty-five years ago the Nation magazine carried a profile story about me...
...but I would then say that this must be an intelligent force, which we call God, or that it is a force created by and set in motion by an intelligence, which we call God...
...This happened night after night over a period of weeks, leaving me increasingly bewildered...
...We are moved by this reflection to regret that we have not sufficiently admired this setting, nor as much as they deserved the marvels of nature, the astonishing riches of the macrocosm and the microcosm...
...What a fascinating image...
...I think she did...
...She said she understood...
...Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, follows Christ in a life totally dedicated to easing the pain and the loneliness of the most abandoned of the poor in the teeming urban wildernesses of the world...
...I had debated, in print and once at the lectern at Harvard Law School with its anti-Catholic editor, Paul Blanshard...
...My father and mother were both deeply convinced and practicing Catholics...
...Now TO MOVE on to your next question: "Was there some moment of enlightenment (satori) that transformed your life...
...Time and again, terrified at the idea of giving up everything my heart was set upon, I fled...
...Or were you never unconvinced?'' The answer is that I was never unconvinced...
...I would not argue with that...
...I find the manifestations of life in these little creatures extraordinary...
...The experience took a sudden, unwanted, and dramatic turn...
...With warmest regards, GEORGE H. DUNNE, S.J...
...I do not deny the possibility, but note that since, thank God, I have never found myself faced with the problem, I have never had to find an answer...
...He also had other prospects in view...
...I do not think it would be difficult to lose one's mind trying to form a positive concept of infinity, or of any of the attributes we attribute to God...
...That is what gives meaning to my life...
...As St...
...Twenty or more years later as a priest, I called upon her...
...Unless I am mistaken, St...
...You ask:"What convinced you of the existence of God...
...It was a long battle and I resisted fiercely...
...thanks for such a wonder...
...We sold the newspaper...
...I do not believe easily...
...Nor can I. Still, I can more easily fit these disasters into the context of belief in the existence of God, than I can fit the marvels of the world into the context of belief in the non-existence of God...
...On a trip to San Francisco with the law school debating team, I met and fell in love with a girl who lived in that city...
...I am afraid nothing I have written can be of help to you, Wally...
...Last year on a visit to the United States I was told by a fellow Jesuit who had known me years ago that, seeing me across the room and not recognizing me, he had asked another in the group who I was...
...This immense world, mysterious, magnificent, this universe with its thousands of energies, its thousands of laws, its thousands of beauties, its thousands of profundities...
...We know him, love him and serve him in and through Christ: And we serve Christ by serving his brethren...
...There are two more observations I should like to make, nevertheless, before moving on to your next question...
...I think the answer is that I am by nature quite skeptical...
...To me the experience was so real, and remains vividly so more than a half century later, and so evidently supernatural that nothing, not contradictions or frustrations, neither powers nor principalities, to use the words of St...
...What marvels are they...
...I have decided, since you put the question directly, to tell you...
...In the springtime too I am always in awe as I watch the extraordinary activity of bees...
...but finally one night I surrendered...
...What God is, is quite another...
...That experience registered in my deepest consciousness, and has remained so ever since, as an unmistakable call to forswear everything else and follow Christ...
...This is a great comfort to me in the twilight of my life-I am in my seventy-fifth year now-when the great battles and exciting events of earlier years are gone and forgotten...
...I had done well in law school, accumulating quite a collection of gold medals which it was then the custom to award for academic excellence...
...It remained on the other side of that screen which I could not penetrate...
...She had been married twice-both times to the same man!-and had several children...
...And that, to return to your question, gives meaning to my life...
...I intended to be a lawyer...
...Paul wrote-even before the Gospels were written-"if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is a delusion and you are still lost in your sins . . . If our hope in Christ is good for this life only, and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in the world...
...The psalmist addressed God: "It is you who formed me, who wove me in my mother's womb...
...I have several times said that God is unknowable...
...Like almost everything else that has happened in my life in the course of the fifty-three years which have since passed, it is related directly to what, using your terminology, I have called my satori...
...Today one flies it in an hour or drives it in seven...
...The simple words of the old catechism for the instruction of children give the meaning of life as "to know God, to love him and to serve him in this life, and to be happy with him in the next...
...She and I went to the cinema and held hands...
...In one section he says what I have just tried to say above, but far more effectively and eloquently: "As far as I am concerned," he wrote, "I should like at the end to have a kind of vision, a summing up of the world and of life...
...I did indeed, following one crisis which I found, as the Irish say "too much of a much," think seriously of leaving the Jesuits, but never the priesthood...
...And so on and so on, with scarcely a limit to the number of ways in which men and women serve their neighbor and in doing so, wittingly or no, follow Christ...
...I immediately broke off my prayer and did not return to it for several days...
...The answer to this is yes...
...Until finally, as the light grew stronger, I began to pray: "If this is what you want me to do, give me the grace to do it...
...How do you maintain a sense of meaning?'' The question does not seem, at least in my own case, that difficult to answer...
...Those are the questions you asked me...
...We say that he is infinite...
...That is what makes it meaningful to me...
...No less worthy of joyful wonderment is the frame in which the life of man is set...
...And not only man, but life in all its manifestations...
...Life continues...
...I think this is the key to an authentic Christian and meaningful life...
...In the course of my early morning hike down to the village and back, which I have resumed since recuperating from my heart attack, I unite all the deeds of the day, simple as they are, to the merits of Christ and offer them for a considerable variety of people and purposes...
...It was a pleasantly nostalgic evening...
...I do so with a certain reluctance, first because it is a very personal thing, and secondly because it is not possible to describe adequately...
...I was born into a believing family...
...No go...
...That sums it up, however simply...
...On the contrary, in the words of the ancient Nicene creed, he "died and was buried...
...Although my father died when I was only seven years old, his memory and example, kept alive by my mother, undoubtedly contributed to my own faith...
...Indeed, in my last instant I salute You and with immense admiration sing thanks...
...The other observation is this: That God exists is one thing...
...I think it should be an expression of gratitude...
...I have no doubt about the former...
...When I was in the hospital one day I saw two cats outside my window...
...Today my life consists simply in saying Mass for the Carmelite nuns and several days a week commuting into Fribourg to look after my Georgetown students at the university...
...None of them, in my opinion, has succeeded in finding an entirely satisfying answer...
...Everything is gift...
...He would not convince me...
...Father Dunne's other activities included writing for the movies and recounting the experience of the early Jesuits in China (Generation of Giants, 1962...
...Perhaps it was something like that...
...And so on with life in all its forms and manifestations...
...The battle was over And I have never had a doubt since that I had received an invitation from God as real as that of Christ to the young man in the Gospel story: ''Go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and follow me.'' My following of Christ has been far from perfect, a path strewn with infidelities, but I have never doubted that the call was real...
...They were copulating...
...As my fondness for Kathy grew, nourished chiefly by correspondence, I decided I did not want to go to Harvard, but wanted to go to the University of California law school which was just a short ferry trip across the bay from San Francisco...
...One night, as I began this petition, a totally black screen suddenly descended between me and what I was asking...
...The cloistered Carmelite nuns here in the monastery where I live, inspired by love for Christ, devote themselves in obscurity to lives of humble work and prayer, in large measure prayer for their fellow men and women...
...It has always been part of Christian belief that God became Man in Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins...
...With warmest regards, GEORGE H. DUNNE, S.J...
...On this very trip when I met the girl, Kathy Hanley, I recall that thanks to bad roads and fiat tires it took us 36 hours to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles-and in a Cadillac, vintage 1924 or 1925...
...I give you FATHER GEORGE H. DUNNE, S.J., taught political science at several universities and served on the ecumenical Commission on Society, Development, and Peace...
...The idea of becoming a priest was farthest from my thoughts...
...I am flying again, but only on two motors...
...No go...
...I think you understand that the long delay was the consequence of the heart attack which incapacitated me for many months...
...That out of union of two tiny microscopic cells, gametes I think they are called, a new life is created, develops, is bom, grows to maturity and so the species is perpetuated...
...After a tremendous struggle with myself, I finally resolved, unlike the young man in the Gospel story, to answer the call...
...En route to the Jesuit novitiate I spent a night in San Francisco with Kathy's family...
...So I added to my evening prayers a petition that things would work out so that I could go to the University of California-and Kathy...
...The same black curtain descended every night...
...But why did I never become unconvinced...
...The late Pope Paul VI, near the end of his life and quite aware that the end was approaching, wrote for his own reflection a meditation upon death...
...I lived in Los Angeles...
...She visited me once at the novitiate with the sister of a fellow novice and we sat on a bench in the garden and made inconsequential talk...
...The bishop who preached at their joint funeral service was unable to answer the question...
...Now, in a kind of desperation, I began to pray for grace to know what God wanted me to do...
...One of the astronauts described walking on the moon as a profoundly religious experience...
...Just last week a few miles from here four mothers of families were killed in a brutal auto accident, leaving a total of fifteen orphaned children...
...If Christ does not live, then, as St...
...It becomes credulity...
...There is a verse in the 138th psalm of the Old Testament of which I am fond...
...Many of these ways are modest indeed...
...I was scared out of my wits...
...But no less powerful and penetrating a mind than that of Teilhard de Chardin has composed some thoughtful pages, upon which I cannot at the moment lay my hand, about how the smallest acts become of transcendent importance when offered to and through Christ...
...That, except, to be sure, for my many sins, is what I have been trying to do ever since...
...When I look at all the wonders in this world, in this universe, from the marvels of inorganic nature to the extraordinary mystery of life in all its manifestations, from the simplest to the most complex...
...Finally I changed the petition and began to ask for light to know if I should, as formerly planned, go to Harvard...
...Against the black screen there suddenly appeared something like a light at the end of a long black tunnel, and the light said, or spelled, or somehow communicated the idea "priest...
...You see, Wally, to one who believes, Christ is not simply an historical personage who lived some two-thousand years ago, died, and was buried...
...I said earlier that "it is a matter of faith...
...Paul aptly observes, the entire edifice of faith collapses and life becomes, as it seems to Jean Paul-Sartre and others, an absurdity...
...Husbands and wives serve Christ by loving and supporting each other and their children...
...In my judgment, this unknowability of God accounts largely for the Incarnation in which, according to Christian belief...
...Always the black curtain descended...
...I was not entirely satisfied, however, and had decided after graduation to find means to go to Harvard University for further studies in law...
...A non-believing psychiatrist would perhaps have another theory to explain what had induced me to renounce everything I had planned and desired to do with my life to do the last thing in the world I wanted to do-become a priest...
...The first is that belief in the existence of God leaves unanswered many questions relating to the problem of evil...
...No one can form a positive concept of what infinity is...
...We would have to sell the paper, because my partner, whose talents were on the business side rather than the editorial side, did not want to carry on if I left...
...That is simply to deny that he has limitations...
...I know nothing about the latter...
...Thomas Aquinas pointed out that all our concepts of God are negative...
...I had long known just what I intended to do in life...
...It is impossible to describe, but was an extraordinary psychic experience...
...When I did the same thing happened...
...Marvelous too are the wonders of inorganic nature in which Teilhard de Chardin, among many others, saw the handiwork of God...
...but the general direction has remained the same...
...What infinite prodigality...
...And on the third day he rose again.'' This belief is central to the Christian faith...
...what a marvel am I! How marvelous are your works...
...YOU NEXT ASK a question which you say is '' most difficult to answer: What gives meaning to your life...
...It had not entered my mind...
...At this point another factor entered the equation...
...Whatever you do to one of my least brethren, you do to me...
...There were some problems...
Vol. 108 • February 1981 • No. 4
