Priests who taught me, I

Teaching is a profession, but for some it goes farther to be  both a vocation and a ministry.  Many stand in the front of the classroom, and communicate information, but few convey the love of a subject and the desire to learn.  This is teaching as a vocation, a call to elevate the spirits of the young people in the classroom or learning center.

Teaching as a ministry includes the basic competence of communication of information.  But a teacher who ministers goes beyond the 8:15 am to 2:45 pm daily slog of periods, tests and grades.  He or she not only passes on information, but by the way they interact with students they open up insights into the adult world.  There is a memorable connection with a unique, unrepeatable, sometimes quirky, always real person.

Two of my teachers who combined elements of both vocation and ministry recently passed away.  Father Joseph E. Henry, S.J., came to Pittsburgh in 1962, in the second year of existence of the Bishop’s Latin School.  BLS was a high school seminary founded by then-Bishop John Wright.  It was part of his grand vision of establishing 12 years of seminary education for candidates for the priesthood in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  Bishop Wright had attended the Boston Latin School, a secular school with a heavy academic dose of “the classics.”  He brought such a school here, under the leadership of Jesuit priests and brothers, with their “ratio studiorum” method. 

Father Henry taught Latin and Greek during his 11 years at BLS (until it closed in 1973).  He was moderator of the Greek Club and the basketball team.  But most of all he molded young men by his very presence.  To this frightened 13 year old, Father Henry seemed ancient (although he was not yet 40 when I first encountered him in the classroom!).  His stern face, black cassock, and way of looking not at you but through you brought me often to the point of peeing my pants.      

Yet as I moved up the ranks during those four very formative years, sitting in his office after school hours I came to know Father Henry’s humor and opinions.  This was the 1960’s, and a world of change was swirling outside of the ramshackle BLS building in East Liberty.  Father Henry was from the old school.  He would have nothing of newfangled educational ideas.  A system of Jesuit education that stretched back to the 16^th century was good enough for him.  As a senior I can remember his mutterings about the school (and certain decisions of the administration) going to “heck” in a hand basket.  He didn’t like the concessions made to us high school seminarians—dances, less homework, easing of the dress code. 

But it was only after I graduated in 1971 that I was privileged to get to know Joe Henry.  I remember serving Mass for him in his tiny studio apartment in Oakland around 1975, when the Society of Jesus allowed him to stay in Pittsburgh and get a master’s degree in classics at Duquesne University.  I remember his fond recollections of Cardinal Wright, whose wit and intelligence Joe admired.  I remember listening to Joe’s stories from Rome, when he was a personal aide to the American assistant at the Jesuit world headquarters, and his few privileged meetings with Father General Pedro Aruppe.  I remember having a delightful three-hour lunch with Joe at a restaurant overlooking the Sonoran desert outside Tucson, Arizona, when Joe was administrator of the Vatican Observatory. 

Joe was an even more wonderful teacher after school was over, for me and for dozens of us BLSers (and later the wives and children of graduates through our alumni association.)  He was a dedicated Jesuit priest and caring teacher.  He died at the Jesuit infirmary in Scranton, Pa., on May 5, at age 82.  May he rest in peace.