REYNOLD HILLENBRAND A Chicago priest who stressed the Catholic in social action.
Hill, John
REYNOLD HILLENBRAND Priestly rabble-rouser, obedient son of the church John Hill Id Saint Patrick's on Chicago's West Side has a ence. On my way home to...
...This valuable international collection theologically documents an evangelical journey towards a globally sensitive and biblically balanced whoiistic mission...
...Whole systems had to be changed...
...One of the poems we coined the phrase "observe, judge, and act" to describe the read was Gerard Manley Hopkins's "God's Grandeur," " and Christian dialectic...
...It was easy, I told them, to remember things he said and did and to discuss the great influence he had on people...
...Commonweal 1 8 March 10, 2000 When I told Hillenbrand that many thought his authoritarian style was disrupting the leadership of YCW as well as that of the other spe- Barry Hillenbrand cialized Catholic action movements, he was surprised...
...Indeed, Dr...
...What did Gregor Mendel's experiments really prove...
...Some at the commemoration remembered him as the na- Reynold Hillenbrand was born on July 19,1904 of Germantional chaplain of the Christian Family Movement (CFM), American parents who belonged to Saint Michael's parish on an organization of Catholic married couples who met every Chicago's Near North Side...
...I was part of this cabal and yet I later came to think it was Hillenbrand's finest hour...
...101, Irvine , CA 92614, USA, phone: 949.752.1392 fax 949.752.1393 www Re numBooks.com Commonweal 1 7 March 10, 2000 ganizers, liturgists, political leaders, and intellectuals...
...myself, who had always considered themselves "Hillen- Was Mailer's The Naked and the Dead a great war novel or a brand men," visited him at his parish in Hubbard Woods trashy novel with great war scenes...
...Smallgroup discussions centered on them and sermons at morning Mass explained them...
...condemned child labor and This latter sensibility was not a supported the right of workcultural skin but part and parcel (a favorite phrase of his) of his ers to form unions in order to deal with such matters as life...
...living...
...These were the placid pre-Vatican II fifties when there was little impetus for change...
...1-870345-29-0 524.95Fuller Theological Seminary Regnum Books International publishing quality studies for theologians and missiologists 17951 Cowan, Ste...
...Those who knew him have not been able to forget him...
...He was ordained in 1929 and remained at the seminary to re- When Hillenbrand's stint on the mission band came to an ceive his doctorate in sacred theology in 1931...
...I met with him often in his study in Hubbard Woods to discuss plans for yearly workshops and to help in the preparation of inquiry booklets for the coming year...
...ing for a Communist government...
...And, by the way, is there and told him he ought to resign from his position as nation- really such thing as a just war...
...looking across an altar toward the faithful...
...With that he climbed the bookcase ladder, a disabled foot notwithstanding, to retrieve the book and read the passage aloud...
...When, later in life, he would discuss the place of torists...
...He wasn't sure he liked the result...
...Woods, a suburb of Chicago...
...Later still, I came to think it was a sad hour for all of us...
...The Great Depression had bowled over the Amer- were any different from when he preached to them the first Commonweal 1 6 March 10, 2000 time...
...The group signed him to be pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Hubbard was held together by its common appreciation of the man...
...theirs was a cause to which he gave much of his time...
...He would frequently ask to help with the spiritual direction of the seminarians, and a Hillenbrand why a certain thing had to be a certain way...
...nieces to a steady stream of questions, opinion, and harassToward the end of the 1960s, a group of priests, including ment...
...cuss what might be done to bring the reality they observed His next assignment, in 1936, was as rector of Saint Mary more in accordance with the desires of Christ for society...
...On my way home to Michigan I wondered about that low-ceilinged, paneled basement...
...But unlike understand how brothers who shared the same genes, the Shakespeare's Caesar, Hillenbrand refused to die, quietly same upbringing, the same sermons on Sunday could end returning each shot in the volley at the one who had fired it...
...Hillenbrand had the major formative role in each of these movements...
...It will flame servation part of the inquiry...
...He was the first chairman of the Association of Chicago Priests...
...I drove to this commemoration from my home in handwritten marginal notes-for a YCW day of recollecMichigan because Hillenbrand had also done this for me...
...brand thing...
...There were also veterans of similar groups for students and for young single people who worked for a living-the Young Christian Students (YCS) and the Young Christian Workers (YCW...
...His hope was that the Mundelein semiters throughout Europe, Latin America, French Canada, and narians, after ordination, would form YCW groups made West Africa...
...eration of Labor...
...And he their prayer books or rosaries...
...There, Patrick Keegan, one of Hillenbrand's closest friends, thought under Hillenbrand's inspiration, YCW trained its leaders in him authoritarian and encouraged me to bring up the issue intense six-month courses...
...His friend Patrick tellectual combat...
...the rosary, and to bless articles of prayer and devotion...
...The mission band fter Hillenbrand graduated from Chicago's was a group of priests who went from parish to parish, Quigley Preparatory Seminary, he entered Saint spending several days in each to preach, to celebrate BeneA Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illi- diction of the Blessed Sacrament, to lead the congregation in nois to continue his studies for the priesthood...
...ternational YCW, admired Hillenbrand and considered him Hillenbrand had a winning gift for drawing out the semia close friend...
...One follower-and we were followers-said of him, "If wages and job security...
...Then he poured us all a drink, chatted amiably with us for a short while and, explaining that he had work to do, showed us to the door...
...It was because the times, as Bob Dylan began to sing at the time, part of his patrician style to obey those who had proper au- were "a-changin...
...During his time at Mundelein, he toured Europe Back at the seminary, Hillenbrand distributed translawhere he visited with Canon Joseph Cardijn of Belgium, the tions of literature of the French Canadian YCW movement international chaplain of YCW, which had national chap- based in Montreal...
...If a man had a job with decent pay, hummed, mumbled, or whispered the Latin prayers...
...He was (SDS), which was to figure so importantly in the coming I now in a position to influence the YCW groups civil rights movement, had ties to college YCS...
...Hillenbrand and another friend of his, Mon- narians...
...A married couple whom both Egan and I knew from our days together at Presentation asked me what Hillenbrand was like...
...In the case of my uncles it was nearly iming...
...His next priestly appointment, which was and center of the spiritual life...
...Hillenbrand brought in labor or- when I saw him next...
...He was an obedient son of the church, and never But there were to be many Barrs in Hillenbrand's future, was this more obvious than at this juncture of his life...
...Hillenbrand never complained about rest of us thought that Barr was disruptive, harmlessly and his sudden change and he never, as far as it was commonly amusingly so, but disruptive nevertheless...
...of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein...
...tion...
...Blaine Barrs appeared everywhere asking under him...
...Whole systems runner of the American Fedceived his patrician ease, his ap- had to be changed...
...The fragrant odor of wood mixed agreeably with the subdued, antique smell of the old books...
...REYNOLD HILLENBRAND Priestly rabble-rouser, obedient son of the church John Hill Id Saint Patrick's on Chicago's West Side has a ence...
...It was a middle-class neighborthe large things in their lives: their marriages, their children, hood of refined congestion: old, decently maintained threetheir parishes, their work, their leisure, and their relationship to the political structures that affected their lives...
...Patrick Keegan, who was the president of the in- up of young men and women in their parishes...
...Bookcases in his study, made from unpainted fir or pine, extended from the floor to the ceiling and covered every square foot of wall space...
...Rumor at the time had it that At the workshops there was a Minneapolis priest named this was arranged by two groups: the Jesuit seminary facul- Blaine Barr, who respected Hillenbrand but was not in awe ty, which resented Hillenbrand's bringing in diocesan priests of either him or his point of view...
...His strong and lasting appreciation of small groups served...
...This was the ob- "The world is charged with the grandeur of God...
...Russell P. Spittler, Provost, 19991406 pp...
...He we might find in either kind of poetry...
...Per- legitimacy to the Knights of haps it was from this socially se- never begin to answer the world's Labor, which was the forecure family that Reynold re- social problems...
...and emphatically rhymed popular poems copied from newsCardijn lived in Belgium during the period immediately paper columns and asked us what we thought of them...
...gomery, Alabama, in 1963 for the Walgreen Drug Store sitin...
...In the gray fabric of the culture, Hillenbrand from his position as rector of the seminary and as- lenbrand's sermons were like colorful threads...
...Then, for the judgment part, out, like shining from shook foil...
...In dentist, another, a psychiatrist, the work done by social agencies the 1870s, during the reign of and a third, who was elevated and parishes in alleviating an otherwise conservative to the rank of monsignor, even- the misery of the disenfranchised, Pope Pius IX, the church had tually became the pastor of Saint he thought such services would given support and therefore Mary's in Evanston, Illinois...
...To the Jesuit faculty at The genius of the "observe, judge, and act" model of the sothe seminary he added diocesan priests who were familiar cial inquiry was that it permitted people to participate in with the church's social teachings, because he wanted to be their own development and-because it was rooted in realsure that the seminarians' academic training included those ity-it was not boring...
...But it was also a way of continuing the act of creThe Hillenbrands attended Mass, which in those days ation that had been begun by God, a way of serving one's felwas celebrated in Latin, at Saint Michael's, a nineteenth- low man, and of developing into the kind of person God century neo-Gothic church administered by the Redemp- wanted...
...During the early 1960s he was assistant national chaplain of the Young Christian Workers...
...They struck their breasts in would show how the Mass itself could not exist without the adoration and contrition when the host was raised after the contribution of those who worked in wineries and bakeries consecration of the Mass and prayed, "Oh Lord, I am not to make the elements employed in the sacrament...
...One of the things that were happening, of course, was that Hillenbrand's work was bearing fruit and that young aking sense of your relatives is never an easy people didn't need him any more to facilitate their think- task...
...It was part sophisticated Trivial Pursuit, part Socratic the Emperor Constantine to address an ecumenical coun- exercise, part presidential debate...
...He was open to whatever good minds with the theoretical machinery of communism...
...Each Thanksgiving during observe and make judgments about the reality about them the 1950s and 1960s, for example, my father's five brothers and to act bravely on what they saw...
...Few saw the Mass as a sacrificial meal shared by a Hillenbrand saw the world's problems systemically...
...to the archdiocesan mission band in 1933, gave him an opportunity to preach about these things...
...Unemployed houses, all within earshot of the men, sullen, ragged, and dechurch bells...
...The movethat had been formed by parish priests who ments that Hillenbrand had created were beginning to go had learned about YCW when they were in the seminary their own way...
...The lenbrand's leadership...
...powerful clique of Chicago pastors who disliked the liberal Weren't there reasonable alternatives...
...Egan thinks that Hillenbrand understood and accepted the truth of this reassurance...
...The tradition survives, even in the hands of its serious scholars...
...He had M possible...
...Some unTo one of them, who was known widely for his wit, he said, "And you, it may disturb you to know, are not funny...
...But the times were now quite guess that he may have wondered-when he revisited a different from those that existed when he entered the major congregation he had preached to in the past-if the people seminary...
...It was very much a Hillencil...
...He reasoned that some day the Mass parishes in alleviating the misery of the disenfranchised, he would be celebrated in the common tongue, the vernacular thought such services would never begin to answer the of each people, and that it would be celebrated by a priest world's social problems...
...I rubbed my derstandings which shimmered in their minds the rest of fingers over an old mimeographed schedule-complete with their lives...
...It was an image I would they would consider if the Gospels or the church's social later come to associate with Hillenbrand himself...
...One brother also became a Although Hillenbrand respected supported workers' rights...
...The organist often crackled or wasn't enough to have Christians and others of good will whined the Gregorian-chant hymns and the celebrant often give food to the hungry...
...Readers will find an unparallel analysis, scholarly to be sure, but not without a few irrepressible and characteristic breakthroughs of Pentecostal piety...
...But the process was challenging, and spent most of his adult life encouraging young people to often entertaining...
...Members of a YCW group would dis- I remember the image Hopkins used to describe that grandeur...
...And so Hillenbrand died...
...teachings had anything to say about the facts they had ob- In 1944 Cardinal Samuel Stritch removed Reynold HilNew from Regnum Books MISSION AS TRANSFORMATION A Theology of the Whole Gospel Edited by Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden "A must read...
...If a man had a job rights of workers to organize, dence of Cardinal George Mun- with decent pay, he would be able had not yet passed Congress...
...YCW full-timers decided to go to Montthority over him...
...He brought in stacks of plain to the United States...
...Monsignor Jack Egan, with whom I had once been assigned as curate at Presentation parish on Chicago's West Side and who received an award at the commemoration for his lifetime of social action work, remembered Hillenbrand as one who brought to Catholic lay people and priests new drive and direction...
...Hillenbrand thought character of the priests who were being ordained under Hil- that, no indeed, there were not reasonable alternatives...
...Hillenbrand was far less necessary than he had been...
...As the countless number of people whose In the vaultlike archives on the sixth floor of the library lives he touched remember, Hillenbrand had patiently dis- building, the papers of the laconic Hillenbrand are conassembled their easy certitudes to reveal for them new un- served in sixty-three linear feet of file boxes...
...And I assigned to teach at Quigley...
...He arranged for Cardinal Stritch to appoint me as his assistant for national YCW matters...
...Why do you come up here and sail into me...
...Jack Egan visited and pointed to the specialized Catholic action movements and the changed lives of the lay people and priests who belonged to them, trying to reassure him...
...During a break, he and I recalled Hillenbrand's YCW workshops held every summer in stifling classrooms at Saint Joseph's College in rural Rensselaer, Indiana...
...But I faltered when I tried to explain that influJohn Hill, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, lives with his wife near Dowagiac, Michigan...
...Hillenbrand's father was enough to have Christians cause the 1935 Wagner Act, a dentist with offices on North aand others of good will give food which was to strengthen the Avenue not far from the resi- to the hungry...
...Peter Kuzmic, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary 20001486 pp...
...I don't remember what the gospel passage was about, but I'll never forget the quiet seduction of his study and his love for books-used books...
...up spread so widely across the political spectrum...
...The uncles would subject their nephews and Perhaps he felt that...
...The family lived in spondent, grouped idly at a large rambling house on Ha- Hillenbrand saw the world's street corners...
...Once, when we were discussing a point in a gospel passage, he said that an interesting reference was made to that point in a book about Shakespeare he received in the mail that very day from Ducketts, a used book store in London...
...al chaplain of the specialized Catholic action movements...
...Hil- he would be able to provide for his own family...
...the Catholic church clearly tist...
...We awkwardly MY UNCLE REYNIE completed our discussion about other YCW matters and I Propriety & a passion for the poor left...
...I could never his rhetorical shot at the master who made him...
...Each yearly workshop was dedicated to a single major area of the Christian life...
...Though Hillenbrand supported the plan, it wasn't his n retrospect, few things could have advanced idea...
...I was pleased with myself that I had stood up to him but he dismissed my criticism out of hand...
...together these organizations were called the Catholic action movements...
...0 Commonweal 1 9 March 10, 2000...
...George Hil- But Hillenbrand knew that lenbrand was Mundelein's den- to provide for his own family...
...I entered the seminary in 1943 and was treated to a signor Donald Kanaly of Oklahoma, would bring the YCW weekly poetry class he gave...
...In any case, Hillenbrand wasn't quite as self-possessed as he appeared...
...When death finally came, the thought that he might have wasted many good years of his life by working with small groups instead of large groups troubled him...
...worthy...
...Commonweal 1 5 March 10, 2000 story apartment buildings and ican economy...
...The action part of the inquiry required them to dismay have stemmed from his frustration with larger groups...
...he died in 1978...
...YCW held weeklong summer workshops, first at Notre Dame and later at Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana, a quiet setting amid the cornfields of northcentral Indiana...
...They had gotten the and three sisters, their spouses and gaggle of children would hang of the thing and now they were challenging their gather for turkey, cranberries, good wine, and bruising inteacher...
...They could do their own thinking, thank you...
...The college-based Students for a Democratic Society his goals in life so well as this transfer...
...He did indeed brighten life, "like shining from shook foil...
...The Mass, he Hillenbrand's lifelong agenda became the Mass and the said, had to be taken seriously because it was the source doctrine of work...
...Representatives of organized labor also came to celebrate Hillenbrand's memory...
...he asked...
...We regrouped on the sidewalk in front of his rectory, wondering where we went wrong...
...Even building at 1700 West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago...
...Then he was end in 1936, his voice was worn out from preaching...
...It wasn't few avenues of redress beleans...
...Ultimately Hillenbrand, who perceived truth in its grandeur, believed it could be revealed only through a proper chain of command...
...He after World War II when the electorate came close to vot- also brought in copies of poems by great poets of earlier ages...
...The battles started at the dinner table and Keegan, as president of the newly formed International continued late into the evening in a vast book-lined living Commission on the Laity, had become the first layman since room...
...cuss the reality, say, in their place of work...
...Workers had mond Street (now called Or- problems systemically...
...signment...
...In 1919 the parent freedom from self-doubt, American Catholic bishops and his refined aesthetic sense...
...voice...
...YCW rented an ancient three-story apartment Hillenbrand why things had to be the way they were...
...He was the second of nine chilother week in small groups to pursue ordered inquiry into dren, six boys and three girls...
...delein...
...The political debates often turned bitter and the uncles Like the assassinating cabal that surrounds Julius Caesar in would go at each other, as well as at the nephews and nieces...
...A theorist, Cardijn de- Then he would ask us to compare the popular poetry with vised a Christian dialectic to compete in young workers' that of the established poets...
...He simply packed his things and moved to his new as- ticulated by Hillenbrand...
...The celebrant faced the tabernacle, his back to the work in God's redemptive plan, Hillenbrand would comuncomprehending congregants who busied themselves with pare it to the saving work of Christ on the cross...
...teachings...
...Shakespeare's play, each one of Hillenbrand's critics took Deep divisions within the family were exposed...
...1.870345.13.4 624.95 The I THE GLOBALIZATION OF Globalization PENTECOSTALISM 01 Peniecostai°.sr-, A Religion Made to Travel Edited by Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus and Douglas Petersen "A milestone in the emergence of Pentecostal scholarship...
...Although lenbrand thought Latin kept people from understanding Hillenbrand respected the work done by social agencies and what was going on...
...It never would known, speculated about the forces that arranged his trans- have dawned on any of the others to challenge a truth arfer...
...It was easy then to imagine Hillenbrand on that longIt is past time to recall what he did to make "the lay apos- ago day explaining a line of Scripture in his quietly deliberate tolate" a reality, and how he did it...
...you want to make a point in a letter to him, make the case well Work, in Hillenbrand's mind, was a means of earning a and frame it in correct and graceful sentences...
...The vitality of YCW matched that of the college YCS movement and worked hand in glove with its members and with those of the CFM...
...It community of worshipers...
...There on a and decided to visit the archives of the University of Notre 0 May weekday in 1998 about a hundred people Dame, to which Reynold Hillenbrand had willed his pawhose lives had been changed by Reynold Hil- pers, to see if they might help me understand how he came lenbrand, a Chicago priest, paid reverence to his memory to be what he came to be...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
