UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Eugene Cullen Kennedy | Jan. 26, 2015 Bulletins from the Human Side
When word came of the death of the distinguished theologian Richard McBrien, the famous phase of oppression finally lifted, and deserved freedom won rang like a Sunday carillon in my head. Few people I know, or know of, have been asked to bear a series of serious illnesses as long as Dick did. Now he is indeed free at last of time’s unforgiving grip and at home in the eternal with which he was so familiar from a lifetime of meditation on, and experience of, every day in his work. He spent a lot of time in the eternal precincts, and his papers were in order as he was waved through, no inspection needed, free at last and home for good.
It would take a lot to misunderstand Dick and his columns and books. Yet mysteriously, the word was out that he was a dangerous dissident, and his excellent column was banned in many diocesan newspapers. Curious, I called up the editors of about a dozen Catholic papers, all of whom gave the same answer to my question about why they did not use his column: “I am under orders from the bishop not to use it.”
His columns, which continued over 30 years, were perfectly orthodox, the product of a master teacher who knew how to make complex issues clear.
I did not understand how much he was feared, however, until I stopped in the bookstore of a grand Midwestern cathedral. I was told by a man who obviously felt that his fate, temporal and eternal, depended on his answer, “We don’t carry any of his books here.”
My mistake was in telling him that they should, especially Catholicism, his masterly work on church teaching.
“I’m calling security,” he responded, reaching for his telephone. I left before security arrived but with a new impression of the terrible irony of those in the official church who were afraid of Dick or the plain truths about faith that he taught. Maybe both. Those officials who trembled at Dick’s work resembled the man who buried his gifts in the ground in the Gospel and explained his behavior, as these officials would to their superiors, “I knew that you were a hard man, and I was afraid.”
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