In the thick of it

...I still think it was a good idea, but after raising a little initial capital we were told in New York that the "really big Catholic money" was available only if we toned down on issues of social justice, race, and the like...

...John always loved new experiences...

...John wrote for Commonweal on a multitude of subjects during one of the most exciting periods in American religious history, and he was right in the thick of it...

...This second study concentrates on 106 selected schools which the report calls "low-income-serving schools" (LIS...

...Poverty--seen not so much as an evil from which human beings suffer but as something which could lead people to become Communists--and the apparent inevitability of corruption define the limits of the world as seen by the right...

...We dropped that idea and instead got Jesuit Father Martin Carrabine of Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action (CISCA) to sponsor publication of a new venture, Today, the national Catholic student magazine...

...John had a very original mind, and he also had a great talent for getting fight to the heart of an issue -- something that served him well when he acted as one of candidate John F. Kennedy's advisors on church-state issues...

...Terrible things could happen, and no doubt will--there will probably be reprisals, there may be assassination attempts, and of course there will be a lot of infighting among the disparate political, religious, and ethnic groups which make up the Philippines...

...In his later work for the Center, John headed up a much discussed project on "Religious Institutions in a Free Society" with Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., Rev...

...As the scene darkens we will hear a world-weary voice from the right: we told you so...

...Here John ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...We hope this report has a salutary effect in that regard...

...And although the majority of Filipinos may have backed Mrs...

...Some members of that small and powerful group are morally enlightened enough to recognize that the poor must receive justice because it is right...

...Such procedures gave me quite a few bad moments, but looking back, I don't think John ever really missed a deadline...

...WASHINGTON THEOLOGICAL UNION 9001 New Hampshire Ave...

...At that time John was editing the Chicago Catholic Worker and running the C,W...

...This gritty reality, with all of its disappointing examples of compromise and human limitation, will be said to prove that the initial hope, the light some of us think we have seen, was false, only a form of emotional fireworks...

...JAMES O'GARA (James O'Gara retired as editor of Commonweal in April of 1984...

...After five years he therefore left the magazine, although he continued writing his column for ten more years...

...John never accepted the "errorhasno-rights" view that prior to Vatican II was the official Roman Catholic position, and this stance brought him much criticism from establishment-minded Catholic critics as well as winning him devoted readers all over the country...

...Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the traditional ban on birth control, bothered him as an example of papal power gone astray, and at that time he felt obliged to stop writing a syndicated column in the Catholic press...

...The question as put is: What do LIS Catholic high schools do that is or isn't effective in promoting academic achievement, religious faith and values, and the acquisition of important life skills among students from low-income families...

...In the early returns, though, he was running so far ahead of the rest of the Democratic ticket that I remember he was scared to death he'd win and have to move to Washington and serve on some dull congressional committee...

...One of his duties included briefing JFK for his crucial question-and-answer appearance before the Houston Ministers Association...

...House of Hospitality...

...The most honest person I ever knew, John was above all honest with himself, and he had long had trouble with Roman theology...

...Still later he directed the Center's study on "The American Character" and also served as founding editor of the Center Magazine...

...On this score, John never quite gave me an ulcer, but to this day I don't know why not...

...That kind of thing was part of being a Commonweal Catholic in those days and we should have been used to it, but it still wasn't easy to take...

...LIS schools need stronger scientific and mathematics ,curricula...

...Since he had never done anything like that before, he said'why riot...

...One way or another, it lasted for twenty-five years before it finally went under...

...In those days there was no independent lay edited paper like the National Catholic Reporter, and what John and I had in mind was a kind of cross between N.C.R...

...Remembering John Cogley I IIII IN THE THICK OF IT HONESlaf, INTELLECT, & FRIENDSHIP EN John Cogley died on,March 28, 1976, the New rk Times said he was generally regarded as the ost prominent Roman Catholic journalist of his generation...

...where a married man with two children could do this, so John took off with Commonweal: 166Theodora and the children for Fribourg, Switzerland...

...Roman or Episcopal, he remained a committed Christian, and it was characteristic of that commitment that he was on his way to ordination as an Episcopal priest when he died...

...This does not mean there are not problems...

...Although he was one of those most responsible, in the end, for Marcos's fall, he was the man under whom Aquino's husband was imprisoned and was a chief architect of martial law...

...Francis de Sales award for his coverage of Vatican II...

...Silver Spring, Md...

...I know that there are great difficulties ahead for Aquino's administration...

...In those days there was no place in the U.S...

...This was a period when religion and especially Catholic news was moving out of the want-ad section and onto the front page...

...The ordinary, dull, often corrupt aspect of politics as a daily business will become a more apparent part of the Aquino administration...

...One of the most conflict-ridden issues in those days -- even more than today -was church-state relations...

...LIS schools, like all Catholic high schools, are having a difficult time communicating faith values to their students...

...With their emphasis on spiritual development, LIS schools aid students to find purpose in their lives...

...Many a day at three or three-thirty he would pronounce himself dissatisfied with what he had written, tear it up, and start all over again...

...The Catholic Worker's Peter Maurin had always predicted that John would one day be an editor of the New York Times...

...But that was part of the problem...

...Reinhold Niebuhr, and Rabbi Robert Gordis as consultants...

...The Sunday before the election when John was at the nine o'clock Mass, his pastor mounted the pulpit and asked rhetorically, "What can one say about a man who is opposed to Senator Joe McCarthy...

...Before he went in, however, he wrote a play at the request of the Catholic Labor Theater -- a comedy about a film star who wanted to become a nun, thus managing to combine two of John's great loves, Hollywood and the church...

...A society can't be built on euphoria...

...Not very long afterward I too came to Commonweal, happily renewing my working relationship with John...

...John and Theodora eventually had six children, and his salary at Commonweal was not adequate...

...As Managing Editor one of my responsibilities was to see that everything went to the printer on time...

...Eventually the whole thing blew over...

...The difficulties of dealing with poverty, with the threat of Communism, with corruption at the local level, all of these things remain...

...The initial study, The Catholic High School: A National Report, systematically detailed the nature of Catholic high schools -- their teachers, students, administrators, purpose, and achievements -- and their positive place in American education in general...

...A POSITIVE REPORT Catholic High Schools: Their Impact on Low-lncome Students is the second major report in two years from the National Catholic Educational Association on Catholic high schools...

...It demonstrates not only the historical commitment the Ameri~can Catholic church has made toward educating the less advantaged, but the fruits that endeavor continues to produce for the church and for the nation...

...John never believed in letting religion or ideology interfere with human relations...

...Others know the same truth pragmatically: the continuing poverty of the masses will make recruits for the Communist New People's Army...

...Rights to the play were bought by Samuel French, and for all I know it may still be performed here and there around the country...

...and Commonweal, a combination of newsmagazine and journal of opinion...

...While we were in the service, John and I agreed that we wanted to start a new magazine after the fighting stopped...

...When all the votes were counted, John lost the race for Congress...

...His uphill race was against a very right-wing Catholic incumbent who was a champion of Senator Joe McCarthy...

...And according to Bishop Joseph A. Francis, the 'Catholic community needs "to act decisively in placing lowincome Catholic schools high on the list of the church's Ipriorities...

...Academically, in nine out of ten measures examined, lowincome students in LIS schools gain as much as higher-income Catholic high school students...

...When he returned from Fribourg, there was a question of what he should do...

...Many people were shocked when toward the end of his life John left the Roman Catholic for the Episcopal church...

...Still, students in each income and race category in LIS schools are more likely to meet suggested curricula standards than is the average American high-school senior...

...These are described as schools in which more than 10 percent of students' families have incomes below the federal poverty line...

...LIS schools have few discipline problems, generally high morale, and promote good study habits...

...But the encyclical which really disturbed him most...

...Ten years after his death, very few days go by that I don't miss him...

...The same thing is ' true, I am sure, of all who loved him...

...John refused to divulge the names of people to whom he had pledged confidentiality, even under the threat of a prison sentence for contempt of Congress...

...I joined him there in 1940, and we remained close friends from then on...

...After the war John and I both finished college on the G.I...

...CISCA had no money, but the magazine developed a pretty healthy circulation and quite a bit of influence...

...To my regret, I cannot for the life of me now remember what that one missed question was...

...no revolution can be made so easily, so naively...

...it was too good to be true...

...HUAC members did not like his conclusions, so they subpoenaed him and demanded that he reveal his sources...

...It is the first study to evaluate how such schools function, and how they are faring...

...Previously the Catholic Press Association had given him its St...

...At one point he was asked to run for Congress as a Democrat in our two-to-one Republican district on Long Island...

...The first days of the Aquino administration reveal tensions which will not dissolve easily, if they dissolve at all: Juan Ponce Enrile, her defense minister, was also defense minister under Marcos and came over to her side only when it was clear that he faced arrest...

...A majority of teachers express satisfaction with their jobs...

...But that was all in the future when I first met him back before World War II...

...The big issue in the race soon became the junior senator from Wisconsin...

...Gary O'Brien, O. Carm...

...I never heard him say he regretted his decision...

...Over the years John had written a number of articles for Commonweal, and when he arrived in New York Editor Ed Skillin invited him to join the staff...

...He headed a study for the Fund on the blacklisting problem in Hollywood and wrote a valuable two-volume report...

...Over his lifetime John wrote hundreds of thousands of words ranging from articles in various mass circulation magazines and editorials and columns in Commonweal to several books, including Catholic America...

...20903-3699 (301) 439-0551 28 March 1986:167became the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions...

...only in mathematics do they not show comparable achievement...

...For a play staged by amateurs, with both his future wife and mine in the cast, I Wouldn't Want to Live There was a great success, with the proceeds paying off all the accumulated bills of the House of Hospitality...

...Today was published primarily for college students and was oriented toward Catholic social action and the lay apostolate...

...On the day on which copy had to go to the printer at five o'clock he would always start off with a nice long chat while I kept a nervous eye on the time...

...The wild joy of the first days of Aquino's victory will not continue, nor should it...

...Answering his own question, the priest began by saying that the best which could be said for such a man was that he was a fool...

...Both academic standards and the climate of LIS schools (sense of community, morale, and nurturance) appear relatively healthy...

...A veteran of many an ecumenical encounter, some of them fairly barbed, John told me later that the ministers managed to come up with only one question on which he had failed to prepare Kennedy...

...Aquino, a substantial minority backed Marcos, for ideological or selfish reasons...

...Bill while we were getting out Today, and when he graduated from Chicago's Loyola he wanted to go on to study theology...

...The poverty of most Filipinos is a great challenge to a government which, for all the hope it brings, is made up of people who belong to the oligarchy which has held power in,he Philippines for years...

...This year he is Visiting Professor in the W. Harold and Martha Welch Chair of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame...

...John Cogley was a good man, a very good man -- as colleague, as friend, as devoted husband and father...

...There is a lot of good news in the 282-page report, as well as ample suggestions for improvement and further exploration...

...Quite the contrary...

...Not that John didn't have a pleasant disposition...

...Motivation among teachers and administrators is remarkably high in LIS schools, with a special sensitivity for lowincome students expressed by 84 percent of teachers...

...Of several minds: John Garvey I THE FORCE OF RESTRAINT COLLECTIVE COURAGE IN THE PHILIPPINES T HE VICTORY of Corazon Aquino and the departure of Marcos was a wonderful thing, like the Solidarity movement in Poland, Gandhi's nonviolent victory in India, and the resistance of the people of Denmark to Hitler's occupation...

...A non-pacifist, unlike most Catholic Workers, John eventually served from 1941 to 1945 in the Air Force...

...Although basically a very shy person, especially in his young days, John had a great capacity for friendship...

...At the Times John had a lot to do with this transformation until a heart attack sent him back to a less stressful post at the Center in California, where he remained until his death...

...deeply was the anti-intellectual, heresy-hunting Humani Generis decades earlier, and I remember his telling me that we had not opposed that papal document vigorously enough...

...LIS schools show strain because of higher student/teacher ratios, greater financial insecurity, and higher teacher turnover (64 percent say their jobs do not provide a decent salary...

...Typically, his friendships cut across all kinds of liberalconservative and religious lines...

...Whites and Hispanics make greater academic gains than black students, and the dropout rate remains higher for minority students...

...Something else was at work in the fall Commonweal: 168...

...Finally he would turn to the typewriter, but I knew from experience that all was not over...

...John already had another offer which would have taken him to a post in Washington, D.C., but he accepted Ed Skillin's invitation instead...

...Sure enough, in 1965 John left the Center to become religious news editor of the Times...

...Things looked bad, but John stood firm...

...I was sorry he felt he had to make the move, but I was not tremendously surprised when I thought it over...

...At this point he moved to the Fund for the Republic, directed by Robert M. Hutchins which later ___U_ WASHINGII N N A ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL FOR MINISTRY Offering graduate degrees and continuing education opportunities to priests, religious, and lay people For Catalog or Brochures contact: Rev...

...He was by far the most popular and most quoted writer we ever had at Commonweal, at least in my thirty-two years...

...John was a great conversationalist...

...The Cogleys lived in the next parish to ours, and their children were in the parochial school there...

...He then went on to outline the other horrendous possibilities...

...There are great differences in each of these examples, of course, but something similar as well, something which is profoundly hopeful...