A Memorial for Fr. Bill Callahan, MD, 7-10-10

Rev. William R. Callahan Dies at 78; Dissident Who Challenged Vatican
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: July 9, 2010

The Rev. William R. Callahan, a Roman Catholic priest and self-described “impossible dreamer” whose vociferous and organized opposition to Vatican policies prompted Jesuit officials to expel him from their order, died on Monday in Washington. He was 78.

The Rev. William R. Callahan

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said the Quixote Center, an organization that Father Callahan helped found to press for reforms in the church and society. It is independent of the church and based in Brentwood, Md. He lived there.

Like Cervantes’s fictional character who inspired the center’s name, Father Callahan tilted at windmills and never accomplished his major goals, the biggest of which was ordaining women as priests. But his spirited campaigns made him a thorn in the church’s side for a generation.

“Bill tried to be a prophetic voice in the church, a voice crying in the wilderness,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

Father Callahan remained a priest after his expulsion from the Jesuit order, the Society of Jesus, in 1991, but the church barred him from acting as one. Known widely as Bill, he still sometimes used the honorifics “Reverend” and “Father.”

He aggravated church officials during the American tour of Pope John Paul II in 1979 by imploring priests to refuse to help the pope in celebrating Mass. Father Callahan’s hope was that more lay women would then have to be enlisted to assist at the services.

When the pope that year insisted that barring women from becoming priests was not a human rights issue, Father Callahan replied, “Perhaps this is not a human rights issue because women are not human or they do not have rights.” He told The Washington Post in 1989 that he was simply “following the example of Jesus, who was never willing to shut up.”

In 1971, Father Callahan helped found the Center of Concern, an organization devoted to social justice issues. In 1975 he started Priests for Equality, to work for the ordination of women. He started the Quixote Center in 1976 with Dolly Pomerleau, who became a work partner of his for many years. They married days before he died.

The Quixote Center achieved particular prominence in its support of the leftist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, a stance directly at odds with that of the Reagan administration. It raised more than $100 million in humanitarian aid for the Nicaraguan government.

Other projects included printing religious books in which language it viewed as sexist, racist and homophobic was expunged. Father Callahan himself wrote “Noisy Contemplation: Deep Prayer for Busy People” (1982), which called God a “merry” sort who viewed humans as entertainment.

In 1979, Jesuit leaders rebuked Father Callahan for his defiance of dogma, and by 1989 his Nicaraguan activities and liberal initiatives in the church, including a ministry for gay Catholics, had set off calls for his expulsion from the Jesuit order. He unsuccessfully fought the action, which he claimed was never explained.

Father Callahan remained active at Quixote and continued to preach to informal gatherings of dissident Catholics.

William Reed Callahan was born on Sept. 5, 1931, in Scituate, Mass. His mother was a Unitarian and his father a Catholic. His mother died when he was 6 months old, and he was raised by paternal grandparents as a Catholic, Ms. Pomerleau said.

He attended the Jesuit-run Boston College High School and after graduating joined the New England Province of the Society of Jesuits in 1948. He had hoped to be an agronomist, but the Jesuits asked him to study physics because they needed physics professors in their universities.

Father Callahan earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston College and a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1962. While pursuing the degree, he worked for NASA on weather satellites. He then moved to Connecticut to teach physics at Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution. He was ordained as a priest in 1965.

Father Callahan mourned the waning of optimism among his generation of Catholic reformers as the church hierarchy grew increasingly conservative. In an interview with The Post in 2006, he said he drew inspiration from Don Quixote.

“He dreams, he has visions, but he’s basically a silly old man,” Father Callahan said. “When people work on social justice issues, they don’t win much and wind up dropping out. To laugh at oneself from the beginning is essential.”
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During the 80's, 90's I supported the Quixote Center with donations. I purchased the inclusive readings for Sundays and the Inclusive Bible when completed. But my main interaction with Bill and the staff at Quixote was during my horrendous eight months sojourn at WRAMC. Retired Col Martha Turner introduced me to the Wednesday night liturgy and it was my spiritual life giving fountain during my 8 months at WR.

We sat in a 15 foot square room its walls covered with art from Nicaragua, the chairs in a circle and table in the center. The presider rotated and I even think I presided one evening, I don't remember. The dialogue homily was joined by all and of course my sharing always centered on what I was experiencing that week, that day at Walter Reed. Even though the people of Quixote were very against the military and war I was accepted and my story honored.

Ken and Nancy from the Center purchased a car that Jason could drive while at WR. We passed it on to someone else when we left in June 2006.

I remember our pot luck dinners after liturgy with Martha worried that we needed to eat healthy foods. She is a RN and nutritionist. It was time with extended "family." An hour of normalcy amongst the sorrow of Walter Reed.

I can never repay the kindness of Quixote Center and especially Bill. I asked for a private counseling session and Bill clarified the path that I had begun, the path of coming to consciousness about my own life. The path of confrontation with, separation and eventual divorce from my Jason's father. I remember Bill's kindness, his gentleness and his respect for my story.

I was able to attend the liturgy in March and in June while looking for a place to live in DC. At the June liturgy I read for Bill this prayer, adapted from one written by a lay Maryknoller:

Bill, Go forth in peace
don't fear the darkness,
your life and ours
are one in God.

Bill though you do not know this road
Jesus walks before you
and waits ahead with open arms
to welcome you.

So lift your eyes
set down your burden
make your step light
and greet this day with joy.

When you are weary
and cannot face the morning
Jesus carries you safely
within his loving arms.

Wherever you go now
you are never alone.
Wherever you go now
you are only going home.

from Vicki Armour-Hileman, missioner to Thailand


I was able to visit Bill in the hospital about a week before his death on July 5. I made the visit at the request of Dolly who wanted me to give Bill communion. However when I arrived, old friends from Quixote were present to give Bill communion. I read a passage and then I hugged Bill one last time, "Bill may great angels wrap their wings about you and keep you safe on the journey." Bill died less than a week later with his wife Dolly at his side. In hospice we said always, "A person will die with those who he/she desires at the bedside." And so it was with Bill. He only needed his partner in justice and peacemaking for 40 years to be present. A blessed transition from this life till eternity.

We have a new patron saint to guard over us and to direct us in our ministry for and with the People of God.

With Bill's death I feel that I have lost a spiritual father, someone I admired and greatly respected. I made poor choices in my life and regret that I did not follow Bill "into the fields" until late in my life.

His memorial card included his photo and this quote "We travel with a God who loves us. We travel with a community of faith. We'll often remember that we're crabgrass Christians, whose love can survive in the cracks of life's sidewalks. Our love reminds us that God's Spirit is with us all days. We are blessed with a merry God. Indeed we are the entertainment."

The presiders at Bill's memorial, he gave his body to a medical school were Fr Fred a married priest and Bishop Andrea Johnson, RCWP Eastern region. I am going to include "one of Bill's favorite canons by Teilhard de Chardin" from the Order of the liturgy:

..."I will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world. "Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once, again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labor. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth's fruits.

Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, say again your words: This is my body.

And over every death force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my blood."

Fr. Bill Callahan: Presente.