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IN PRINT: BOOK REVIEW NO ORDINARY FOOL: A Testimony to Grace Reviewed by Robert Barron, Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture, Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, Ill.
That wish first emerged in the context of the aristocratic Episcopalian culture of the first half of the twentieth century. Hughes evokes this lost world with an attention to detail and an affection that goes beyond mere wistfulness. He remembers Sunday dinners at the elegantly appointed home of Bishop William Thomas Manning, the Episcopal bishop of New York and a major social and political figure of the time. But above all, he recalls the magnificence of the High Anglican liturgy at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and other lesser Episcopal churches and chapels. The chant, the choral singing, the vestments, incense, processions, and the stately English of the Book of Common Prayer left an indelible mark on him. The Catholic liturgies of the period, which he attended from time to time, were, he thought, unspeakably banal by comparison. The muttered Latin of the priest, the bad singing of the under-rehearsed choirs, the complete lack of real congregational participation convinced Hughes that the Catholic church, at least in our country, was in dire need of liturgical reform. He also felt that Catholicism lagged behind his Episcopalianism on the intellectual plane. Sermons that he heard in Catholic churches, as well as explanations offered by Catholic apologists of the time, struck Hughes as simple-minded. One of the signal virtues of this story is the reminder, especially to some younger Catholic conservatives hankering after the church of the nineteen-forties and -fifties, that the pre-conciliar American church was far from a liturgical or theological paradise. By far the most involving part of Hughes’s story is the account of his wrenching but ultimately satisfying transition from the Episcopal to the Catholic world. Like John Henry Newman—whom he resembles in many ways—Hughes read his way from High Anglicanism to Catholicism. He found great sustenance in the work of the liturgical movement theologians, as well as the thinkers associated with la nouvelle théologie. Compared to their intelligent and doctrinally substantive Catholicism, his Anglicanism began to seem “a house of cards.” But what blocked his full embrace of the Catholic church were, on the intellectual level, the claims concerning the authority of the pope; and at the personal level, the fierce opposition of his beloved father. Though he worked his way toward an acceptance of Catholic claims to papal primacy and authority, he never managed to assuage his father. I won’t spoil his story by going into all the details, but suffice it to say that Hughes’s eventual entry into the Catholic Church broke his father’s heart, and the two were, despite strenuous efforts on both sides, never fully reconciled. His telling of this part of his story as a testament to the working of grace is alone worth the price of the book. I found fascinating as well his account of the theological culture of Germany in the years immediately surrounding the Second Vatican Council. Hughes’s first years of study for the Catholic priesthood took place in Innsbruck, where his teachers included Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, two of the most important periti at the council. What he took in from these thinkers, who were deeply immersed in the tradition of the church, contrasted sharply with the practical reforms that were taking place in the Catholic church in the post-conciliar period. When he returned to this country in the early 1970s Hughes experienced a dizzying cognitive dissonance, and his evocation of that time is important for those liberals who tend to look at the period through rose-colored glasses. One of the most remarkable features of Hughes’s book is his frank exploration of his own sexuality, including a non-exclusive same-sex attraction that has endured throughout his life. He tells us that even as a young child he felt drawn to some of his playmates with an ardor that he recognized later had a sexual overtone; and he relates, with a good deal of anguish, that at a key moment in his formation for the Catholic priesthood, a mild acting out of homosexual desire led to his dismissal from his German seminary program. What I found refreshing in his approach is a certain detachment. He uses these episodes neither to advocate for gay rights nor to argue for a change in ecclesial discipline, nor to hold himself up as a negative moral exemplar. Rather, he presents them as moments in the drama of a life lived under the direction of a mysterious grace. The very blitheness and emotional blandness of Hughes’s treatment of his sexuality might serve to bring the entire discussion to a new and more productive level. Anyone interested in a well-told story will appreciate this book. So will those seeking to understand more fully the Catholic church of the Vatican II period. But most of all, those who are captivated by an account of God working out his purposes through the vagaries of a human life will find in this autobiography a great deal to savor. |
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John Jay Hughes—scion of the East Coast establishment, son of a prominent Episcopal priest, direct descendant on his mother’s side of the founding father whose name he bears, student of Rahner and Ratzinger, priest of the Catholic church—has lived an extraordinary life. He tells his story in his readable, warm, and spiritually insightful autobiography, No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace. The leitmotif of Hughes’s book is joy, the joy that comes from grace. At the very outset of his story, he reminds us that, though the Catholic priesthood in America is passing through its darkest period, study after study continues to reveal that American priests are remarkably content. Hughes enthusiastically associates himself with this consensus, enumerating for us the particular reasons for his joy: preaching the word of God; ministering pastorally to God’s people; and above all, standing at the altar, celebrating the Mass. It was the desire to be a priest that animated Hughes’s major decisions from his childhood to the present day.
