Chesnut father ed dowling page

bleeding deacons and the promoters to destroy the A.A. fellowship. The chapters on the Eleventh Tradition and Twelfth Tradition (both dealing with anonymity) make it clear that the principal danger which the anonymity principle is designed to help counteract, is the danger created by “the promoter instinct in us,” where a small handful of self-aggrandizing individuals would, if they were allowed, go out and set up their own personal publicity programs in the public media. In their search for public fame and notoriety, these publicity seekers would turn A.A. into something more like a “vaudeville circuit,” Bill W. said, where self-proclaimed A.A. experts competed against the pop singers, standup comedians, talk show hosts, and television stars to see who could get the biggest audience in the public media.

559 See Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-37.

560 In fact, as we see particularly in The Magician’s Nephew (London: Bodley Head, 1955), C. S. Lewis taught that we live in a multiverse made up of many worlds, some of them just beginning, and others ending. There are small gateways — a wardrobe, a ring, a woodland, a pool — which can provide links between different worlds. And there also seems to be something like transmigration of souls taking place at some points, or something very close to it.

561 The text of Bill and Lois’s prayer is given in Pass It On p. 265. This prayer assumed the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, for it stated that all of our human spirits had preexisted before their incarnation in physical bodies on this planet in the present era. Indeed, the prayer says that all of our individual human spirits had always existed in some realm or other, and always would exist for all eternity, and would continue to have fresh experiences and adventures. And in quasi-Swedenborgian fashion, as we have noted, the prayer stated that our future incarnations or embodiments would ultimately involve passing through a series of different heavenly realms (the “house of many mansions” in John 14:2), in each one of which we would learn yet new and different things about God.

562 Augustin Poulain, S.J., The Graces of Interior Prayer.

563 Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” section I.2.

564 William R. Miller and Janet C’de Baca, Quantum Change.

565 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, trans. George Reith, Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1867-1873) chapters 3-8.

566 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1957).

567 Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961) was a member of the Communist Party and a Soviet spy until he defected somewhere around 1937 or 1938. In 1948, he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee against Alger Hiss, who was being accused of being a Soviet spy. California congressman Richard Nixon, who later (in 1969) became President of the United States, was an important member of that committee. Then in 1955, Whittaker Chambers (who by now had switched to the completely opposite wing politically) went to work as a senior editor at William F. Buckley, Jr.’s new magazine, the National Review. Buckley had become the standard bearer in American politics of the intellectual wing of the American Conservative movement.

568 Chesnut, First Christian Histories, pp. 12, 41-42, 44-50, 59, 190, 210, 255.

569 This was the terminology used by John Wesley, who along with Jonathan Edwards, was one of the two great theorists of the Protestant evangelical movement back in the early eighteenth century, when it first began. See Wesley’s Standard Sermons for continual examples of the contrast he made between “formal outward religion” and “the true inner religion of the heart.”

570 Harry M. Tiebout’s talk is in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age on pp. 245-251.

571 John Henry Newman, Sermon 14, “Saving Knowledge,” pp. 151-161 in Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), quote taken from pp. 161-162. Available online at http://www.newmanreader.org/Works/parochial/volume2/index.html.

572 Pass It On p. 371.

573 Huxley, Perennial Philosophy.

574 For the biblical reference, see the story in Genesis 28:10-22 of Jacob’s dream at Bethel.

575 Matthew 26:36-46, Luke 22:39-46, Mark 14:32-42.

576 See Eric Berne, M.D., Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships (New York: Grove Press, 1964). In further explanation, Father Dowling is talking here about rationalization, which is a psychological defense mechanism in which a whole series of spurious but seemingly rational and logical objections and arguments are given in order to avoid having to speak about how the rationalizer is really feeling and thinking. Self-styled intellectuals of a certain sort like to use non-stop rationalization to block psychotherapists when painful truths threaten to surface.

577 The monastery grounds spread over 40 acres of rolling hills at 19961 Live Oak Canyon Road, Trabuco Canyon, California.

578 Lattin, Distilled Spirits, pp. 140 and 167.

579 See social psychologist Fraser Trevor’s blog for May 1, 2013, entitled “One man who influenced Bill Wilson greatly was Gerald Heard. Tom Powers often said that Heard was one of Bill’s sponsors.” In Dream Warrior Recovery, at http://dreamwarriorrecovery.blogspot.com/2013/05/one-man-who-influenced-bill-wilson.html.

580 Huxley, Perennial Philosophy.

581 Huxley, Doors of Perception.

582 Big Book pp. 8 and 25.

583 Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” section I.2.

584 Pass It On, Chapter 23, pp. 368-377; on Tom Power’s presence see p. 371. See also Ernest Kurtz, “Drugs and the Spiritual: Bill W. Takes LSD.”

585 Lattin, Harvard Psychedelic Club, p. 67.

586 Pass It On p. 371; Hartigan, Bill W., p. 178.

587 Lattin, Distilled Spirits, p. 205, citing a letter written from Wilson to Heard on December 4, 1956. The group which included Dowling and Eugene Exman is also mentioned in Amelia Hill, “LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed,” The Guardian (Thursday 23 August 2012), available online at http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/23/lsd-help-alcoholics-theory.

588 Lattin, “What Bill W. told Carl Jung About his Awesome LSD Trip.”

589 Letter from Aldous Huxley to Father Thomas Merton, 10 January 1959, as quoted in Ernest Kurtz, “Drugs and the Spiritual: Bill W. Takes LSD.”

590 Letter from Bill Wilson to Gerald Heard on September 1956, as quoted in Amelia Hill, “LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed.”

591 Letter from Bill Wilson to Gerald Heard on December 4, 1956, as quoted in Lattin, Distilled Spirits, p. 205. Also quoted in Amelia Hill, “LSD could help alcoholics.”

592 Letter from Bill Wilson to Gerald Heard in 1957, as quoted in Don Lattin, Interview in Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society at http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/the-points-interview-don-lattin/. Part of this quote is also cited in Amelia Hill, “LSD could help alcoholics.”

593 Letter to Father Ed Dowling from Bill Wilson on December 29, 1958 as quoted in Don Lattin, Distilled Spirits, p. 207. The same paragraph is also given verbatim in Don Lattin, as interviewed by Ron Roizen in Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society (October 15, 2012) at http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/the-points-interview-don-lattin/. It is also cited in Amelia Hill, “LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed.”

594 Letter to Father Dowling from Bill Wilson on October 26, 1959 as quoted in Lattin, as interviewed by Ron Roizen in Points (October 15, 2012).

595 Letter from Bill W. to Father Ed Dowling on November 23, 1959, in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 96-97.

596 Arthur S. (Arlington, Texas), Narrative Timeline of AA History, under the year 1956: “Bill had several experiments with LSD up to 1959, perhaps into the 1960’s.”

597 Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 92 and 126.

598 Ibid. 55-57.

599 Letter from Bill Wilson to Father Ed Dowling on May 8, 1958 in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 91.

600 See Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 92 and 122 n 183, letter from Bill W. to Joe Diggles (one of Father Ed’s former students) on September 2, 1958: “He has recently been here, by the way. He has had a heart attack only a month since; nevertheless he carries on as usual.”

601 See Fitgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 92 and 94, citing letter from Bill W. to Fr. Ed on December 29, 1958.

602 Letter from Father Dowling on December 14, 1959 in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 97.

603 Letter from Father Dowling’s sister Anna Dowling on March 17, 1960 in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 101.

604 Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 92.

605 A transcript of a photocopy (in an Irish A.A. archival source) which had been made of the original letter, which I was told was preserved in the archives of the Sister of Charity of St. Augustine (Sister Ignatia Gavin’s order) in the United States.

606 John C. Ford, S.J., Man Takes a Drink: Facts and Principles About Alcohol, with a foreword by Mrs. Marty Mann (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1955).

607 A transcript of a photocopy (found in an Irish A.A. archival source) which had been made of the original letter, which I was told was preserved in the archives of the Sister of Charity of St. Augustine (Sister Ignatia Gavin’s order) in the United States.

608 Also transcript of a photocopy (found in an Irish A.A. archival source) which had been made of the original letter, which I was told was preserved in the archives of the Sister of Charity of St. Augustine (Sister Ignatia Gavin’s order) in the United States.

609 Edward J. Dowling, S.J., “A.A. Steps for the Underprivileged Non-A.A.,” Grapevine (July 1960), reprinted in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship, Appendix A, pp. 125-127.

610 Bill W., letter to Ollie in California, January 4, 1956, as quoted in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 40-42.

611 Linda Farris Kurtz, DPA, Recovery Groups: A Guide to Creating, Leading, and Working with Groups for Addictions and Mental Health Conditions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 30.

612 See the Toledo, Ohio, Blade for Tuesday, December 5, 1967 and the Chariton, Iowa, Herald-Patriot for Thursday, October 12, 1972.

613 Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976). This French group had named itself after Mattaccino, the name given to a famous court jester figure in the Italian theater, who would speak out boldly and tell the truth to the king when everyone else was afraid to do so. The mutawajjihin (“mask-wearers” in Arabic) were originally Moorish sword-dancers.

614 See the four-part statement of the organization’s purpose which appeared on the inside cover of their publication, The Ladder.

615 Lilian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), chapters 6 and 7, pp. 148-149 and 179-186; and Marcia Gallo, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers, 2006).

616 Pierre Louÿs, The Songs of Bilitis translated from the Greek, trans. into English by Alvah C. Bessie, privately printed for subscribers by Macy-Masius Publishers in New York, 1926.

617 Twelve and Twelve p. 48.

618 Ibid.

619 Trysh Travis, The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

620 The Grapevine has “ethnic-psycho-somatic,” but ethnic (which makes no sense) is surely a misspelling for the word ethico, by simply exchanging an o for an n.

621 Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age p. 259.

622 One researcher gives Father Ed’s date of death as March 30, 1960 (and his date of burial as April 3, 1960) — see the older Find a Grave page on Rev. Edward Patrick Dowling at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16958125. But a number of excellent sources certify that April 3rd was the date of death. Only a month after his death, for example, we read in an official Jesuit publication that Father Ed “had flown to Memphis, Tenn., on Saturday, Apr. 2 .... He was found dead in bed at 8:00 A.M. the following day” — see McQuade, Obituary. The official Alcoholics Anonymous obituary, which appeared only two months after his death, says the same thing: “Early Sunday morning, April 3rd, Father Edward Dowling died peacefully in his sleep” — see “To Father Ed — Godspeed!” the obituary of Fr. Ed Dowling by Bill W., A.A. Grapevine (June 1960), available online at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/aahistorylovers/conversations/messages/1731 (AAHistoryLovers Message 1731from William Lash, April 1, 2004). The well-researched biography of Father Ed by Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 101, likewise says “Early on Sunday morning, April 3, [1960] Father Ed died peacefully in his sleep.” Brian Koch, a careful researcher and A.A. historian, also gives Dowling’s date of death as April 3, 1960, see “Fr Edward P Dowling” on the Find a Grave website, at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=73326044. We are told that his burial was on “6 APR 1960 Florissant, St. Stanislaus Cem., St. Louis, MO” on the Rootsweb website, see http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=dowfam3&id=I18100.

623 But Brian Koch, a very careful researcher, says that “there is some dispute, especially among the local Jesuit Historical Society that no bodies were actually moved.” See the Find a Grave website at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=73326044. Also see the Rootsweb website at http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=dowfam3&id=I18100.

624 McQuade, Obituary. Bill W., “To Father Ed — Godspeed!”. Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 124 n. 206.

625 Bill W., “To Father Ed — Godspeed!”

626 Letter from Paul K. in Memphis to Lyb in St. Louis on April 4, 1960, as quoted in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 102-103.

627 McQuade, Obituary.

628 Ibid.

629 Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 103-104.

630 Father Fred Zimmerman, S.J., letter of July 16, 1986 to Father Jim Egan, S.J., as quoted in Fitzgerald, Soul of Sponsorship 103.

631 Bill W., “To Father Ed — Godspeed!” In this obituary, Bill W. quoted from some of his introduction of Father Dowling at the A.A. International in St. Louis in July 1955, see Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, p. 254.

632 Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, p. 254.

633 Again see Bill W., “To Father Ed — Godspeed!” and Wilson’s introduction of Father Dowling at the A.A. International in St. Louis in July 1955, as recounted in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age on page 254.