Jesuit Journeys
Spring/Summer 2005

BY FR. JIM HUG, SJ

Fr. Jim Hug, SJ celebrates Mass on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. at a 1999 protest. CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE PHOTO

I did my regency at Creighton University from 1966 to 1969 – what seems like such a long time ago now. It was quite a tense period, immediately after the Second Vatican Council, one rich in lessons from which I still prosper today.

This is so because the changes in the Church then, coupled with a rapidly changing social landscape of the 1960s, created deep feelings of divisiveness – not only among my brother Jesuits in the Society of Jesus, but throughout the Church and society as a whole. In ways, the world then was like the world I wake up to now.

As the Vatican II changes started coming in, we began different liturgical experiments around the Creighton campus, one being a midnight Mass. The tensions between the people who didn’t want to see these changes and those for whom change couldn’t come fast enough were building. Sometimes it got ugly.

At one point the archbishop even called me to his office over a report he received that we had started celebrating a midnight Mass in the dorm. Well, I was a scholastic; this was regency. I was naïve and innocent and thought, “Well, what’s wrong with that? We are trying to get more people to Mass. Midnight is a good time for them, and they’re coming, and they’re coming in droves.”

The author as scholastic in the early 1960s at the Jesuit College in St. Bonifacius, Minn.

Fr. Tom Shanahan, SJ, my community superior at that time, went with me to see the archbishop. I am grateful to Tom to this day because he handled it all very smoothly, explaining, “Oh, we didn’t realize there was Canon Law that said you can’t do this without the bishop’s approval.” With Tom’s wisdom and guidance, we worked through it.

Another time, folks who favored a much more traditional way of worshiping and of living religious life called a meeting at a certain time and place. I thought I would go, mostly because I wanted to hear first-hand what their concerns were. When they saw me coming, the whole group started to move to another room. But one fellow stayed behind and engaged me in conversation. He kept me talking until I had no idea where the others had gone, and I never found them.

The tension we were living with was not a productive tension but the kind that can tear a community apart. Amid all this, Fr. Joe Sheehan, SJ came for a community visitation. Joe was the new provincial. He had been brought in under difficult circumstances, succeeding a provincial whose term had ended early due to poor health. Joe had been my novice director several years earlier, a year after I entered the Society of Jesus in 1959. Coming under Joe’s direction then was like the breath of fresh air coming into the Church after Vatican II. He was just a wonderful, prayerful, gentle man. So I was excited. I thought, if anyone could make things smooth in times of upheaval and help heal the community, it was Joe.

Fr. John Holbrook, SJ

Fr. Bruce Biever, SJ

Joe first met with everyone individually. As is customary with any provincial visitation, he later sat down with the full group. People were waiting for Joe and just kept pummeling him with questions the whole time. It was very, very painful. I remember going away wondering how he could stand it and praying for him. I learned afterward that he went upstairs, picked up the phone, and called his socius, Fr. Bruce Biever, SJ. They talked for an hour and half just so Joe could unburden himself and get it out of his system.

As the end of my regency approached, I wrote my letter requesting permission to go to theology and described the tensions I had felt personally and witnessed in my community. I expressed some doubt and wondered do I really want to do this? Do I really want to go on with this? But when I thought about putting the rest of my life into union with people like Joe Sheehan, Tom Shanahan, and other Jesuits I had come to know, such as Fr. Joe Eagan, SJ, Fr. Bob Purcell, SJ, and Fr. John Holbrook, SJ – people I had worked with, people with wonderful spirit – I said, “This is the way I want to live my life.”

Obviously, I did go on to be ordained. And Joe Sheehan carried on as only he could, and things began to settle down. Through the years there was a gradual transformation. Mutual respect was resown and took solid root, as did trust and peacefulness between people who earlier were at odds. Again, I speak not only of our Jesuit community but, in many ways, of the community at large.

I’m sharing this reflection because I now hear that we are getting more traditional sorts of candidates and that tension is rising again between traditionalists and progressives, whatever kind of language one chooses to use. In the larger community the labels liberal and conservative might apply.

Fr. Bob Purcell, SJ

So I want to recall those earlier times because the Spirit over time was able to heal the effects of our differences. What is important is that we prayed and we kept at it and we kept trying to understand each other. That was critical then and it is critical now. It’s critical because each of us has a piece of revelation, in terms of our personality and what we need, that opens us up to God in different ways. I remember something Fr. Bob Leiweke, SJ, my spiritual director in the juniorate, said to me: “Just remember, God is so intensely rich and beautiful, that God needs every other bit of creation to reflect some facet of that.”

I share this reflection because I want to remind us all of that. My hope is simple: that in discovering the differences among us, with prayerfulness and with respect, we will come to know much more the God who is calling us all forward.

Fr. Jim Hug, SJ is director of the Center of Concern in Washington, D.C., which envisions a world where all peoples can survive, thrive, and give back to their communities, enhancing life for all who share the planet. The center works to advance more just, sustainable and authentically human development for all, especially for the marginalized and those in poverty. For more information go to www.coc.org.

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