My mother was a very kind and genuinely holy
woman, though somewhat nervous and frightened. She'd sprinkle
holy water around if there was a lightning storm or anything like
that. But she was the one person in our extended family who welcomed
everyone, even the "black sheep."
My father was a hard worker, very loyal, a good and caring father,
but a man with a temper and at times a hard drinker. He always
maintained that my mother was the one that saved him. I always
thought that the two them together made for a well-balanced, good
family. Although they had had little more than a grade school
education in Ireland, they encouraged us children to study hard,
and were very proud that all four of us finished college, and
even got further degrees. My father read a lot, including everything
I wrote into his late nineties.
After I finished my studies in psychology and
clinical psychology, when I came to Weston, I was doing psychotherapy
with Jesuits in training for the priesthood. But no one ever talked
to me about religion in those sessions, just as they hadn't talked
about religion in those sessions in Ann Arbor. I never questioned
why this was so, until in the province in 1970, we started to
learn how to give the Spiritual Exercises to individuals. I suddenly
realized that I could use the clinical training I had to help
people talk about experiences of God. That's when I came to the
conclusion that I had been acting in a way similar to the way
my professor had acted when he began doing psychoanalysis, unconsciously
giving signals that we don't talk about religion in counseling
sessions.
I was a province consultor from about 1972 onwards.
The provincial had approached me about different jobs when he
was looking for vice provincials. And I was able to convince him
that what I was doing at Cambridge was a good idea. That's when
he made me a province consultor.
When he created vice provincials, there were over 1,100 Jesuits
in the New England Province, and beginning with General Congregation
31, we had recovered the importance of a serious account of conscience
with the provincial each year. One provincial could not hear the
account of conscience as it should be done for that many men.
The provincial's original idea was that these vice provincials
would be actually in charge of their subdivision in the New England
Province. As he saw it, they would be the actual provincial for
their area.
I enjoyed the job of being provincial very
much. And I also enjoyed the time when it was over. I found that
we had to do something about health care in the province. I also
learned something about finances. The first thing I did was to
look into buying into Medicare, which meant buying into Social
Security.
We had already done that at Boston College because of a catastrophic
illness in the Jesuit community the year before I became rector
that threatened to send Blue Cross/Blue Shield sky high for everybody
in the university.
Jesuits over 65 were not in Medicare. Health care costs were affecting
everybody negatively. So we were able to get the Jesuits of the
province into Social Security in order to qualify for Medicare.
