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Father Ed Dowling — Page 1 CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 1 May 1, 2015 Father Ed Dowling CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 2 Father Ed Dowling Bill Wilson’s Sponsor Glenn F. Chesnut CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 3 QUOTES “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a de- mocracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” Edward Dowling, Chicago Daily News, July 28, 1941. Father Ed rejoiced that in “moving therapy from the expensive clinical couch to the low-cost coffee bar, from the inexperienced professional to the informed amateur, AA has democratized sani- ty.”1 “At one Cana Conference he commented, ‘No man thinks he’s ug- ly. If he’s fat, he thinks he looks like Taft. If he’s lanky, he thinks he looks like Lincoln.’”2 Edward Dowling, S.J., of the Queen’s Work staff, says, “Alcohol- ics Anonymous is natural; it is natural at the point where nature comes closest to the supernatural, namely in humiliations and in consequent humility. There is something spiritual about an art mu- seum or a symphony, and the Catholic Church approves of our use of them. There is something spiritual about A.A. too, and Catholic participation in it almost invariably results in poor Catholics be- coming better Catholics.” Added as an appendix to the Big Book in 1955.3 CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 4 “‘God resists the proud, assists the humble. The shortest cut to humility is humiliations, which AA has in abundance. The achievements of AA, which grew out of this book, are profoundly significant. Non-alcoholics should read the last nine words of 12th Step, page 72.’ — Edward Dowling, S.J., The Solidarity of Our Lady, St. Louis, Mo.” A quote from Fr. Dowling on the book jack- et for Alcoholics Anonymous, beginning with the ninth printing of the first edition in January 1946.4 Bill W., A.A. Grapevine (Spring 1960), “Father Ed, an early and wonderful friend of AA, died as this last message went to press. He was the greatest and most gentle soul to walk this planet. I was closer to him than to any other human being on earth.” CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Quotes Table of Contents Father Dowling’s Early Life 1. The Route to Becoming a Priest: 1898-1931 2. The Queen’s Work and the Cana Conference 3. Cognitive Behavioral Psychology and Small Group Therapy 4. Father Ed Receives a Gift of Grace: 1940 Father Ed and Bill Wilson: Two Spiritual Masters 5. Discovering A.A. and Meeting Bill W: 1940 6. Pain and Suffering: (1) Emmet Fox 7. Pain and Suffering: (2) Matt Talbot 8. Pain and Suffering: (3) Ignatian Spirituality 9. Bill Wilson’s First Great Epiphany: November 1934 10. Bill Wilson’s Second Great Epiphany: December 1934 11. Bill Wilson’s Third Great Epiphany: December 1940 12. Richard Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness 13. Characteristics of Cosmic Consciousness 14. Panentheism, Nature Mysticism, and Walt Whitman 15. Father Dowling’s Version of Cosmic Consciousness 16. The Radical Wing of the Jesuits CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 6 17. Jean Daniélou S.J. and St. Gregory of Nyssa 18. Gregory of Nyssa: the Transcendent Realm 19. Gregory of Nyssa: The Spiritual Life as Perpetual Progress, from Glory to Glory 20. Two Kinds of Catholicism 21. Aldous Huxley and the Perennial Philosophy, Gerald Heard and the LSD experiments 22. The Intersection of Four Major Religious Movements 23. Ignatian Spirituality 24. Consolations: Feelings, Visions, Voices, and Contact with Saints and Heavenly Beings 25. Bill W. Does His Fifth Step with Father Dowling: 1940 Father Dowling’s Later Life 26. Bill Wilson and A.A. from 1941 to 1945 27. Making Moral Decisions: An Ignatian Pro vs. Con List in Father Ed’s 1945 Queen’s Work article 28. Bill W. Takes Instructions in Catholicism from Fulton J. Sheen: 1947 29. Bill W. and Father Ed on Papal Infallibility: 1947-1948 30. Ratifying of the Twelve Traditions and Dr. Bob’s Death: 1950 31. Spooks and Saints 32. Spiritual Experience and Poulain’s Graces of Interior Prayer 33. Father Ed Has a Retinal Stroke in 1952 and Bill W. Works on the Twelve and Twelve 34. Father Dowling’s 1953 Article Comparing St. Ignatius’s Ascetic Theology and the Twelve Steps CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 7 35. Father Ed’s 1954 Article: How to Enjoy Being Miserable 36. Father Dowling in 1955: Appendix to the Second Edition of the Big Book 37. Father Dowling in 1955: The A.A. International in St. Louis — Part I 38. The 1955 A.A. International in St. Louis — Part II 39. The 1955 A.A. International in St. Louis — Part III 40. Bill Wilson and Father Dowling Take LSD: 1956 41. Father Dowling’s Last Years: 1957-1960 42. From Substance Abuse, Insanity, and Trauma to Gays and Gluttony: 1960 43. Death: April 3, 1960 Bibliography Notes CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 8 Father Dowling’s Early Life CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 9 CHAPTER 1 The Route to Becoming a Priest: 1898-1931 Father Edward Patrick Dowling, nicknamed “Puggy” as a school- boy, was born on September 1, 1898 in St. Louis, Missouri. 5 Many Jesuits were moved around to varying locations over the course of their years in the order, but Fr. Dowling spent nearly his entire life in or near the great riverboat city. St. Louis was at that time the fourth largest city in the United States, an energetic, ambitious, bustling town which in 1904 (the year young Ed turned six) hosted both the World’s Fair and the Olympic Games. His grandfather had come to America shortly before the American Civil War, forced by the great potato famine to leave his Irish homeland (the Dowlings came from Ballagh, Kilroosky in County Roscommon6), but the family prospered after settling in St. Louis. His grandfather started a railroad construction company, which was later managed by Ed’s father Edward P. Dowling (1871-1956). Ed’s mother, An- nie Cullinane Dowling (1866-1934), belonged to an Irish family which owned a livery stable and an undertakers establishment.7 Childhood and youth: Ed’s family lived on 8224 Church Road, just two city blocks west of the Mississippi River, in the tiny suburb of Baden on the north side of St. Louis.8 The first church to be established in Baden had been Holy Cross Roman Catholic CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 10 Church, which was just one block south of where he lived: domi- nated by German immigrants, the church’s parochial school even had its classes in German. The Irish had felt very uncomfortable even attending mass there, and eventually split off in 1873 to form their own parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel (located three blocks north of where the Dowling family lived), with their own parochial school added the next year.9 Ed was baptized at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But from the résumé which Father Dowling put together later on, it appears that his parents did not wish to send their son, while he was very young, to either of the nearby parochial schools, the German or the Irish, and instead sent him at first to the Baden pub- lic school.10 And yet they were an extremely religious family: Ed’s mother went to 8 a.m. mass every morning. There were five children in all: Father Ed (Sept. 1, 1898 – Mar. 30, 1960) was the oldest. His sister Anna (Nov. 21, 1899 - March, 1980), the second oldest, never married and took care of Father Ed at the end of his life when he was left blind and severely crippled from arthritis; she acted as his reader and his secretary, and traveled with him. The next child James was born in 1903 and died in October 1918 at the young age of fifteen while he was a student at St. Mary’s College in Kansas, a victim of the great In- fluenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. The next-to-youngest child, Paul Vincent Dowling (May 12, 1905 – Nov. 10, 1955), tried the Jesuit novitiate but decided not to stay, and became a newspaper reporter. In 1939 he married Beatrice F. (1909-2003), they had two children (Paul and Mary), and then he died at the young age of fifty while his children were still not out of their teens. Beatrice however sur- CHESNUT — FATHER ED DOWLING — PAGE 11 vived down to almost her ninety-fourth birthday. The youngest child Mary (Feb. 17, 1907 - Dec. 16, 1976), became a Religious of the Sacred Heart and librarian at Maryville College. This institu- tion was originally located in south St. Louis, but in 1961 moved to a new campus over on the far west side of St. Louis, and is now called Maryville University. Mary and Anna established the Dowling Archives at the new campus, a collection of material which is important for Father Dowling studies: nearly all of the surviving letters between him and Bill Wilson are preserved there.11 As a child, Fr. Dowling came under the influence of Jesuit ideals at a very early age. Although he went to public school when he was very small, as soon as he was old enough to take the street- car by himself, he was sent to Holy Name Parochial School in the College Hill neighborhood (on the north side of town, like Baden, but over where the St. Louis University College Farm was locat- ed).
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