John Tracy Ellis, R.I.P.
Higgins, George G.
joy and suffering, of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal of keen blasts, and cold showers, and storms." He was not discouraged, however, by this somber prospect. To the con-...
...Louis makes me feel solider...
...Or not so much my past as my past image of the world, of knowledge, and of things...
...I recall, in this connection, Ellis' s telling me a few years ago that, despite his anxious concern about the future of the church and the future of our society, he fully agreed with Saint Augustine who cautioned the faithful of his own time, fifteen hundred years ago, not to indulge in pessimism or romantic nostalgia: So we must not grumble, for as the Apostle says: "Some of them murmured and were destroyed by serpents...
...He was a man of exquisite courtesy, the quintessential but relaxed and affable gentleman, a good listener, a delightful con- versationalist and raconteur, an ecumenist before his time, a strong supporter of women's rights and of lay initiative and lead- ership in the church, and, last but not least, a man of profound and persevering prayer...
...Knowing the length of the Spirit of St...
...Twice already they' ve answered the kind of dinner table ques- tions we got them for: How and when did house cats come to America...
...Just taking a volume down and paging through it, as I used to as a kid, reading what interests me, has that soothing effect of walking through a museum or gallery...
...joy and suffering, of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal of keen blasts, and cold showers, and storms...
...I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors-would we not still hear them complaining...
...Ellis seldom if ever concluded an address or a homily with- out quoting his beloved Newman...
...There's more information now, more scientific advances and wars to include...
...Even the platypuses and sweet peas look posed and stiff...
...A woman turns on a stove...
...Most of the astronauts in the pictures are captioned without name...
...They'rejust"astronauts," not the five- star heroes I remember from the '63 set...
...A student lifts up a petrie dish---everyone has just had a hair- cut, everyone is wearing new clothes...
...An odor of dusty libraries and chemistry labs and sci- ence fairs and high-school health assemblies comes off the books, and even of the green cut lawns and neat curbs of suburban America...
...George G. Higgins of The Catholic University of America was a personal friend of John Tracy Ellis for more than fifty years...
...More women are men- tioned, more blacks...
...GEORGE G. HIGGINS Msgr...
...It's silent...
...Only 23 feet, 8 inches long...
...I quoted Newman above as having said that in our age "truth can assail falsehood...
...Hours pass before you look up and notice it's lunch time...
...What sufferings of ours even bear comparison with what we know of their sufferings...
...The word "assail," as used in this con- text, would be too aggressive if applied to a man of Ellis's del- icate sensibilities...
...and that) it is one great advantage of an age in which unbelief speaks out, that faith can speak out too...
...Then in his mercy, may he give us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last...
...Louis...
...But so far I've been reading for memories, and the past I'm recalling is my own...
...Commonweal 'WORLD BOOK' AT SEVENTY-FIVE GO LOOK IT UP THRUSH, TITMOUSE & PAUL TILLICH / 've been engrossed in the World Books since they ar- rived UPS last week, though more out of nostalgia than a need for information...
...A man drives a car...
...And how big was the Spirit of St...
...The print today is smaller than in the 1963 edition we had when I was growing up--a white and blue set, in the hallway by the bathroom, the only books in the house...
...Is there any affliction now endured by mankind that was not endured by our fathers before us...
...The facts come in handy for grown-ups like me, too, since I tend to be a little fuzzy and intuitive...
...To the contrary, he would undoubtedly have agreed with Newman that "unbelief is in some shape unavoidable in an age of intellect and in a world like this...
...You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them...
...And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former times...
...As we fondly bid him farewell, then, it will be fitting to say with Newman: "May God support us all the day long 'till shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done...
...Even this new seventy-fifth an- niversary edition reads like a wonderful old scrapbook, something I've come across in an attic somewhere...
...Whatever of that, we honor him as a priestly scholar who, in the spirit of Newman, spent his entire priest- hood not assailing, but irenically countering unbelief with faith and falsehood with truth or, in the words of Saint Paul, "Doing the truth in charity...
...With the Pilgrims...
...that, if falsehood assails truth, truth can assail falsehood...
...When I quoted this text to Ellis, not too long before he died, he emphatically--and not with great good cheer--seconded Augustine...
...He was not discouraged, however, by this somber prospect...
...We thank God that Ellis has found that holy rest and that ev- erlasting peace...
...There's an exquisite tenuousness, a thin- ness, about the quality of your attention...
...Even now, all the photographs of people and places and processes look as if they were taken in the fifties some- where in Ohio...
...For the next ten years we want to be able to say "go look it up" and have the kids rac- ing to the shelves, grabbing a volume, and falling on the liv- ing room carpet, maps and transparencies cracked open...
...But it's all more or less still there: the glossy pages and the color drawings, the calm, detached, sixth-grade, social-stud- ies-teacher voice patiently describing the hierarchy of dogs, or the evolution of engines, and the structure of bicameral legis- latures...
...Your interest in any one thing is never passionate--nothing registers fully or loud6 November 1992:7...
...You're wandering along quietly, stopping to look at this and at that, light reflecting off the glass cases, voices murmuring in the dis- tance, the echo of footsteps...
Vol. 119 • November 1992 • No. 19
