Backstory
Abandoned by my father who disappeared with his secretary to Las Vegas, my first ten years were spent at a Dominican academy followed by almost three years at a Catholic minor seminary. (I was ejected at Easter by the Rector who caught us smoking in the Gothic Tower at midnight.)
After two years in the Navy (1944-46) I spent three years studying philosophy in a Jesuit University. I won the Midwestern Province's annual senior essay contest with a rant entitled "Needed:More Red-blooded American Catholics" by which I meant people fighting for social justice like the Commies were at that time. When I went off to graduate school two of those Commies exploited my innocence by appointing me chairman of the new Thomas Jefferson Forum.
When I went back to my home U over Christmas, my metaphysics professor greeted me warmly with "I hear you've gone over to the enemy!" Merry Xmas! Period. Luckily, Paul Hallinan, my Newman Club chaplain, defended me before the Cleveland Chancery with "It's a University, gentlemen. We're seeking the truth." He was speaking to John Krol, then a very ordinary Ordinary, later a right wing Cardinal in my hometowm. Paul became the first archbishop of Atlanta, an intimate of Martin Luther King.
Only my sociology professor, John F.Coogan, S.J., had the balls to fight Father Coughlin and Detroit racism. Readers curious about my auto-laicized life can find it on this blog.
The intellectual morons who invoke Cardinal Newman to criticize President Obama at Notre Dame would better waste their cerebella studying Sharia Law which is the way the RC was before the enlightenment. The Pope who feebly fought Modernism in the 19th century with the fatuous doctrine of infallibility (the Virgin Mary was conceived without Original Sin), thereby insuring that celibates in the 20th century would abuse children with impunity and their bishops and Pope Benedict XV would all piously lie about these real Sacrileges.
Patrick D. Hazard, Weimar, Germany.
Monday, 16 April 2012
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