I met Frederick Copleston.

[Fathter Greg Sharkey visited me here in Bangkok last Monday. He lived with Copleston in the Jesuit house on Farm Street while earning his Sanskrit degree. I talked about this meeting. Greg also confirmed that the robe Father Copleston wore was the English Jesuit habit. I went to look for this short piece I wrote and tried looking for it on my blog. I am republishing it here].

In 1965, I met with the famous English Jesuit Frederick Copleston and could not come up with one decent philosophical question. 

I have been trying to collect the memories of our visit. It was 60 years ago, and not a huge breakthrough event in my spiritual journey, so parts of it are hazy and will remain so, but given that I was the only undergraduate on the schedule of a renowned Jesuit philosopher, it was an honor and, as you will see, memorable. Father Bill Nolan, the Dartmouth Newman Chaplin, of course, knew that I wanted to become a Jesuit and did everything he could to encourage me, which was the explicit reason for the interview.

The process of memory is notoriously unreliable. Recall activates a selective circuit in the brain, and we tend to recall those juicy bits that confirm the stories we tell ourselves. Even if the date, time, and location are reasonably accurate, even if they can be verified, the data collection system is not as if it were a selfie with the Pope. It still might be difficult to remember whether it was a bright day or if the autumn winds were blowing. On top of that, the things we retrieve may hold some key that we are not fully aware of. There could be some mystery-solving, like the crumbs you laid on the path to Grandma’s house. 

Copleston came to Dartmouth and stayed at the Newman Center for perhaps a week. I checked the online archives to identify events or colloquia in the Philosophy Department. None. Perhaps he had been scheduled at BC, Harvard or Fordham, and Nolan arranged to have him lecture at the Aquinas Center, which he often did. That is possible, even likely. It is also likely that if Copleston had been in Hanover at the invitation of the College, he would have stayed at Aquinas House. He was a very traditional old-school Jesuit who rose at 5 AM every day, did his meditation, and then said Mass. Mass would not have been complicated if the College put him up in a hotel room.

Bill Nolan gave him the office of his assistant for the week, and Copleston had office hours. I’m sure many Dartmouth faculty were anxious to meet him. I remember that my hour was carefully scheduled. I even remember what he wore. Over a simply tailored black suit and a tall white collar that I associated with Anglican clerics, he wore what I thought was a strange robe, even for a scholar priest. It was not the long black Jesuit habit I knew from the Jesuits at Fairfield. It might have been a don’s gown from Heythrop. There was no sash, and the sleeves seemed to be broad black ribbons that dropped from the elbow. I recall that his speech was very precise and soft-spoken. I would characterize it as meticulous. He didn’t rush, and my memory, even after 60 years, was that he was a careful listener. Google tells me he would have been just a few years older than my father, but I didn’t get any daddy vibe. 

He had just published Volume 7 of his monumental 11-volume History of Philosophy: Fichte to Nietzsche. His debates about the existence of God with Bertrand Russell, which made him very famous in Catholic circles, had taken place at least 15 years earlier, but I had no questions to ask about his writing or the debate. Perhaps Bill Nolan had told him that I wanted to enter the Jesuits, or I did. I told him about my parents' vehement opposition.

I was now 21 and could enter without their permission, and I was tempted to do that, but I promised them that I would finish college before I set off on what they considered a disastrous career choice. He asked me what I was studying and whether I liked it and pointed out how it would do no harm when I became a Jesuit. When he asked why I wanted to be a Jesuit. I mumbled something about being impressed by certain scholastics and priests in prep school. Then he got personal and told me that his own parents had opposed his becoming a Catholic priest, but he persisted and continued to treat them with love and respect. He said that they eventually came to support his decision. After some quiet time, he looked at his watch and said that he would have to begin preparing for another meeting and would pray for me. 

I had an interview with the man whom I imagined might have removed any doubt about Aquinas’s Unmoved Mover argument for the existence of God, and instead received the promise of prayer to resolve a painful family situation.