John Courtney Murray's Societies
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John Courtney Murray’s Societies J . LEON HOOPER, S .J . John Courtney Murray1 was born in 1904 into a New York, Roman Catholic family—a family of five comfortably supported by his lawyer father. in 1920, at a comparatively young age, he was accepted into the Society of Jesus, begin- ning with two years of spiritual formation (novitiate), followed by two years of humanities, both at St . Andrews on the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, New York, and, then, three years of Scholastic philosophy at Weston College, Massachu- setts . His formation as a Jesuit was not unusual, save for the two years he taught Latin and English literature at the Ateneo de Manila, Philippines—a period of teaching that was not unusual although the location was . He returned to Wood- stock College, Maryland, for the study of theology and pastoral ministry in preparation for the priesthood . Ordained in 1933, he completed a standard fourth year of theology at Woodstock, then a third year of spiritual formation (tertianship), again at Poughkeepsie . In 1935 Murray was sent to the Gregorian University (Rome) for further studies . In 1937 he completed a doctorate in sacred theology (S .T .D .) with specializations in the doctrines of grace and of the Trinity, but with a disserta- tion focused on Matthias Scheeben’s notion of faith2 (this last would eventually shape his recommendations for a lay theology) . Returning to Woodstock, he began teaching Trinitarian theology and, in 1941, assumed editorship of the Jesuit journal, Theological Studies . He held both positions until his death in Queens, New York, in 1967 . After his two years of graduate studies in Rome, the only extended times he spent outside the United States were as a post-war consultant for the drafting of the section on church and state for the new German Constitution and his intermittent sojourns in Rome during Vatican Council II . Thus, Murray’s formation took place during the Roaring ’20s, the Great Depression, and the rise of European fascism . Yet there is little evidence that the ’20s, or the Depression, or Italian fascism had much of an impact on his 1 There are many supportive and critical commentaries on Murray and his work . For two that provide more biographical information, see Donald E . Pellote’s John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict (New York: Paulist Press, 1976) and, most recently, Barry Hudock’s Struggles, Condem- nation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey Toward Vatican II (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2015) . 2 A portion of that dissertation was published as “The Root of Faith: The Doctrine of M . J . Scheeben,” Theological Studies 9 (1948): 20–46, and the full dissertation as Matthias Scheeben on Faith: The Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murray, ed . D . Thomas Hughson, S .J ., Toronto Series in Theology 29 (Lewiston, N .Y .: Edwin Mellen Press, (1937) 1987) . (From this point on, any citation without a name belongs to Murray .) 64 J . LEON HOOPER, S .J . studies 3. Only with the outbreak of World War II, following the lead of his Church,4 did Murray begin thinking beyond the highly Scholastic and abstract formation he had received . 1 . Murray’s Writings Murray published often (around 145 distinct items5), but most of his work was article length, many of which began as talks . He is most often cited for his 1960 collection of essays under the title We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (WHTT)6 . His most scholarly works were a series of nine articles, most published in Theological Studies,7 focused on Catholic Post-Reformation treatments of church-state relations and religious liberty . His most interesting work and most suggestive for our interfaith age, in my judg- ment, were two brief books published in the last four years of his life: The Problem of God and The Problem of Religious Liberty .8 The first was devel- oped from three talks he delivered at Yale University; the second, of about the same length, was composed and refined during Vaticanii . Themes expressed in these two small books also found expression and development in several brief articles and talks immediately before his death . At the outset, two methodological issues in reading Murray should be noted . First, most of the articles that make up WHTT were published prior to the 1960 3 In a 1940, three-part address then published in pamphlet form, Murray delivered a sharp critique of the liberal, democratic West, echoing turn-of-the-century Roman Catholic condemnations of Liberalism, Modernism, and Americanism, a line of argument that shaped him probably both in Rome and at Woodstock . Murray continued from such condemnations to a claim that the rise of “Bolshevism, Nazism, Fascism,” in the face of the West’s isolating individualism and materialism, was understandable, if a less than ideal, attempt to reclaim community . See “The Construction of a Christian Culture: I . Portrait of a Christian; II . Personality and the Community; III . The Humanism of God,” abridged, and pub . in Bridging the Sacred and the Secular, ed . J . Leon Hooper, S .J . (Wash- ington, D .C .: Georgetown University Press, 1994), 101–23) . For Murray’s contrasts of liberalistic individualism, the new collectivism, and Christian personalism, see p . 112 ff . 4 Murray participated in the formation of “The Catholic, Jewish, Protestant Declaration on Word Peace” and wrote on the issue in the pamphlet by the Catholic Association for International Peace, The Pattern for Peace and the Papal Peace Program (Washington, DC: Paulist, 1944) . 5 At Woodstock we have been working on a Murray Bibliography for a couple decades and have a couple more ahead of us . The site, with most of Murray’s published articles available as full, search- able texts, can be reached at this link: https://www .library .georgetown .edu/woodstock/Murray . 6 (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960) . 7 I won’t list all nine, but they began with “Governmental Repression of Heresy” in Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America Chicago (Bronx: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1948: 26–98) and ended with “Leo XIII and Pius XII: Government and the Order of Religion, in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed . by J . Leon Hooper, S .J . (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox), 49–125 . Original publication in T . S . was blocked by Rome in 1955 . Corrected galley pages are in Georgetown University, Murray Archives, file 7–536. 8 The Problem of God, Yesterday and Today (New Haven: Yale University, 1964), and The Problem of Religious Freedom, Woodstock Papers 7, (Westminster, MD: Newman,1965) ..