Personal Background
I grew up in the suburbs of New York City living the American dream. My mother emigrated from Ireland at 19, crossing the ocean and landing at Ellis Island, hoping to escape the poverty of her farm life. Marrying my father, no better off financially than she, but smart and hardworking, they built a middle class lifestyle for my brother and me. We lived in a neighborhood of easy relations between Catholics, Protestants and Jews. I was well aware of the horrors of the Holocaust from an early age and made a personal pilgrimage to Dachau as a young adult. I have prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the first class of women students at the University of Notre Dame, I received a first-rate education, formation in values and Christian mission, and the bitter taste of rejection by young men unwilling to share the university with us.
After Notre Dame I went to Nairobi, Kenya to join the Holy Cross Fathers’ mission on the east end of the city, past the infamous slum Mathare Valley to the development of Dandora. There I was confronted by racial and ethnic prejudice, the disparity between the poverty of most Kenyans contrasted with the affluence of the British colonial lifestyle still evident in the late 1970’s. I learned Swahili and tried to be useful. Coming back to the States I pursued graduate studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. It was there that I was able to absorb and integrate the many formative experiences of my early life. I was training for the Catholic priesthood, thinking within the framework of contextual theology, advocacy for the poor, heading to Israel to study biblical theology and walk back into history, and learning to take my shoes off for the “holy ground” of encountering another human person, no matter our differences. I was given a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in theology at Fordham University in New York and there pursued my interests in 19th Century Theology, John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel, and the writings of Karl Rahner. The Catholic Church did not ordain me. And as the years have gone by it has become more and more difficult to serve as a theologian in a church that seems to be closing the door to the breathe of air that was Vatican II.
Looking back on those days early days it has been an incredible journey. Of course I’ve learned so much from the experience of classroom teaching, with undergraduates, pastoral ministry students, and doctoral candidates. And they inspire this new project, to help as a mentor and guide for individuals and organizations defining themselves and their place in the world. Some of the most amazing experiences of my life have been out of the classroom, doing ministry with survivors of domestic violence, helping people build their pastoral skills through field work, and being entrusted with the spiritual care of hospice patients and their families. People have incredible resilience; I wrote a paper entitled “Diving into Darkness” that began with the story of how a woman escaped her violent husband. She found a better life. My mother used to say “tomorrow is another day.” Anything and everything is possible.
My family has been at the heart of everything I have done. I have been blessed with love and companionship, with children who still inspire me to be a better person. It has not been an easy life. I have lived through divorce and an annulment, financial troubles, career reversals, and the death of both my parents. But it was the death of my beloved Ron, a man who filled my life with joy, who gave me boundless love, forgiveness, acceptance and respect that ripped apart my heart and soul. He was with me in Montreal when I gave a paper at the World Religions after 9/11 Conference. It had been important for him, as well. As a retired American Airlines Captain his world was shattered when two of his planes, for they all had personalities and quirks, were put into the Twin Towers killing the passengers he had always sworn to protect. (There is more than one kind of Hippocratic Oath). I’ve just completed a manuscript entitled Christ A New Perspective: the life of faith in a diverse world. An excerpt from the introduction can be found on this website. I spent some time doing research for it in the Bodleian library in Oxford, thanks to an Oxford Foundation Fellowship. An odd mixture of classic thought, bound in books in a very old library, and the raw material of current events went in to a text, which challenges its readers to become more religiously tolerant. In my work and my life these days, my goal is to be part of the movement of good men and women striving to make the world safer, more sustainable, more life-giving for human beings and other creatures.