A Wanderer Interview…
Promoting Fr. Hardon’s Cause And Heralding His Work
By PEGGY MOEN
(The Wanderer on May 24 interviewed Fr. Robert McDermott, postulator for the cause of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ [1914-2000], the celebrated catechist, author, and preacher. Fr. McDermott was in Minneapolis to attend the Annual Benefit Banquet for The Catholic Servant. McDermott began working on Fr. Hardon’s cause for canonization in 2008. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. As a graduate student of Catholic doctrine at St. John’s University in Jamaica, N.Y., Fr. McDermott studied under the direct supervision of Fr. Hardon. He now works out of the Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, Archive and Guild, 902 West Stephen Foster Ave., Bardstown, KY 40004.)
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Q. Can you describe what your role as postulator involves?
A. A couple of things. One is just trying to coordinate Father’s life. And of course when I say that, people have to realize that Father had no unpublished thoughts. And we have 18 filing cabinets and about 250 filing boxes with manuscripts and correspondence that we’re still trying to go through. So that’s one aspect. The other is to take depositions of people who knew Fr. Hardon in different aspects of his life for the cause.
Also, I have to keep Fr. Hardon’s name and memory alive. He worked at a time prior to the explosion of technology — the Internet and DVDs and CDs. He died in 2000, so [I’m] trying to keep his memory alive beyond the people who knew him and worked with him, because he met a need in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. But for other reasons that I’ll go into later on, his memory and name can be kept alive. So those are some of the things I do as postulator.
Q. I suppose it’s foolish to ask if it’s a full-time job.
A. It is [a full-time job]; I live in a parish and help out there, but this is my main work.
Q. How did you become the postulator?
A. Some mutual friends of then Archbishop Burke and mine knew that he was looking for someone to oversee the project, and I was in Milwaukee caring for my mother who was sick at the time. And Archbishop Burke knew that I had had Fr. Hardon as a professor back in the seventies and eighties. So he asked if I would be interested in coming to St. Louis for an interview, so that’s how I got the job.
Q. What influence did Fr. Hardon have on you?
A. First, even before [I knew him] as a professor, through him I was able to meet now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. But certainly — not that I always follow his advice! — the importance of recording ideas and thoughts. He wanted everyone to always keep a journal, though I can’t say I’ve done that. That would be one thing.
Back in the seventies and eighties, [through] his Catholic Catechism, I have to say I learned more Catholic theology from that book than from four years in the major seminary — given the state of seminary education at the time. So it was a great help.
Also, I remember when he was trying to promote lay people receiving L’Osservatore Romano, I took a subscription which to this very day I still renew. You can get a lot of information on the Internet, but I still keep that subscription up and receive it weekly.
Q. How would you describe Fr. Hardon’s legacy in catechetics — what fundamental thing did he contribute?
A. He had the ability, which few people have, to synthesize and to explain. And that’s why I say his Catholic Catechism really met a need that was not being met at the time. He wrote that book at the request of Pope Paul VI, who had published in 1969 a document called the Credo of the People of God. And at the time there were the appearances of other things like the Dutch Catechism. All of these had elements of heresy in them. And so [Pope Paul] asked Fr. Hardon to write this Catholic Catechism to try to refute that and to give for the English-speaking world a basis of operations, which it did successfully.It’s been superseded now by the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, which came out 20 years or so afterward.
Q. Is his Marian Catechetical Apostolate still growing?
A. It is. That is based at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, [Wis.]. And the next project of Cardinal Burke is to build a retreat house and a Marian catechetical center, so that will be called the Marian Catechetical Center and Retreat House. And that will be, besides [offering] retreats, for the formation of Marian Catechists. [That’s] because, under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe — he calls her “the star of the New Evangelization” — [he thinks] we have to retrain people to be leaders of catechesis.
The days are gone when you could rely on the religious formation of people. That’s not happened in the past 30 years or so.
Q. I understand Fr. Hardon was involved with the preparation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
A. Yes, he was, consulting with then Cardinal Ratzinger.
Q. You’ve been quoted as saying there’s a providential overlap between Pope Benedict’s emphasis on back to the basics in liturgy and Fr. Hardon’s push for back to the basics in catechetics.
A. Correct. As I say to many people, the problems of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and so on are still with us, because the aberrations have become normative. So whether it’s liturgy, religious life — which was under investigation, but that seems to have stopped — retreats, parish life — all of these; there are just many aberrations that are still with us. And so Pope Benedict is [trying] to address these issues primarily through the liturgy; Fr. Hardon through the theology, catechesis — and religious life, which he was very concerned about.
Q. Do you think interest in Fr. Hardon’s cause is growing?
A. I like to think so. One of the challenges, as I said before, is making people aware of Father’s name and his work. I compare him in some ways to the cause of Fulton Sheen. And Fulton Sheen was better known in the sense that he had television programs, which Fr. Hardon didn’t have. But they were both professors, and of course Bishop Sheen had a greater profile as the head of the Propagation of the Faith. But Father was somewhat of a contemporary of his; he died 11 years after Fulton Sheen.
But to make people aware of Fr. Hardon: That is why in The Catholic Servant (a monthly Twin Cities Catholic newspaper distributed free), starting this ten-part series [on Hardon], the writer, David Hottinger, points out the context in which Father was operating: the widespread dissent of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. And as I just said, those problems are still with us. They’re not as boisterous, in some ways they’re a little contained, but the aberrations are still with us.
If you look at education in general or Jesuit education in particular in this country, you’ll see plenty of aberrations. In the liturgy, there are a lot of aberrations that have become normative; retreat houses and retreat life, parish life — what is the sacramental life of a parish? A half hour of Confessions in a parish of 3,000 families — how does that meet anyone’s needs?
A Servant Of God
Q. How is the Facebook page for Fr. Hardon’s canonization going?
A. Oh, very well. I’m not on Facebook, but my coworker, James Maldonado, is, so I always have him check it. I think there are something like 1,600 friends of the page. But anyway, Father’s page is doing well; I just don’t have one myself.
Q. How did Fr. Hardon get to be a servant of God?
A. Archbishop Burke had petitioned the Holy See; that was before I came in 2008. He had petitioned the Holy See for that title, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, early on in the process. Usually that would come a little later in the process.
Q. About when was it that Burke petitioned for that title?
A. About 2006 or 2007.
Q. So you were named postulator in 2008?
A. I was named postulator the following year [2009]; I came as an episcopal delegate first.
Q. Are there any pending miracles that might advance Fr. Hardon’s cause?
A. All the time people write or call, but nothing that is proven valid yet. One of the great mistakes that people make is that they will pray to numerous blesseds or venerable [persons]. And of course that in and of itself invalidates it, should a miracle occur. So that’s one difficulty. People don’t understand that.
Q. There were many good priests and religious who fought the good fight during the problems of the postconciliar era. Why among them is Fr. Hardon being considered for sainthood? What makes him unique?
A. Certainly, he lived his priestly and Jesuit vocation in a very exemplary manner.
Anyone who knows him knows that he was a very simple man. He never acquired goods. He was gifted by God with a profound intellect: the ability to synthesize and explain things, which not everybody can do. He also had a discipline — the ability to get by on little sleep, which, again, not everybody has, in order to devote himself to prayer, meditation, constant direction over the phone to people, counseling people who came to see him, teaching. He was concerned about many different facets in the Church.
He really pushed himself in an exemplary manner, and lived his vows and his priesthood. And they were very difficult years….
And he was a great help to religious, too, who were caught in their communities; they maybe had been in 25, 30, 35 years, and the communities were abandoning the habit, their apostolate, communal life, prayer. What does a [religious] woman do that doesn’t want to do those things? He was a great help to them.
He provided a fertile foundation for the development of new communities.
Cautious And Concerned
Q. How do you think Fr. Hardon would assess the current state of the Church in America, now that some good things have taken root?
A. I think he still would have a caveat — he would see the difficulties with education, with religious life, even though there are signs of growth and springtime that didn’t exist 20 and 30 years ago — we can’t deny those things. But overall, the mass of Catholic humanity has been so secularized in this country — in parish life, in schools.
I think he would still be very, very cautious and concerned about it.
Q. Thank you, Father; we appreciate your time.
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