This is the final in a series of blog posts on my great uncle, Rev. Joseph Stephen Reiner, SJ. It may, however, be the most important as what he established would change the church in Chicago, and, in my opinion it would lead to an overall affect on the Church nationally, and even the nation. Fr. Reiner, as we know was the Dean at Loyola University during a time of great growth, and great upheaval (the start of the Great Depression). Yet, his life was more than academia. As we saw in the prior posts he was a man of action and wanted students to know how to learn so they could see, judge and act. His idea of action would persuade him to establish the Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action (first known as CISCORA and later CISCA. The name change, according to Fr R Hartnett, SJ, in his Loyola speech was because "wags mispronounced that so the name had to be changed." Hartnett would work closely with Fr Reiner on the establishment of CISCA. While the establishment of CISCA may be the best known activity of Fr Reiner, as Dean he also had other responsibilities.
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| Loyola University of Chicago |
As Dean of Loyola, starting with the nation in a recession, Reiner oversaw expansion of the Arts and Sciences, the main undergraduate body for Loyola. At Loyola, Fr Reiner would establish the School of Commerce, under the College of Arts and Sciences, perhaps in order to assure that those educated in business would understand the liberal arts, and also act in concert with his ideas of Catholic social teaching. Reiner, however also established the Glee Club, choir and band, showing that all was not business. He also established, following his idea of student governance, the student council at Loyola. This too flowed from his overall pedagogical method to advance the idea of see, discern and act, and to provide students the ability to learn for themselves. Students best followed from a faith that would grow through learning, discernment and action. Faith was important as he established Friday masses for the student body and with this he established his missal to increase lay participation at mass, for as
The Queen's Work (Sodality newspaper) pointed out to him it was the mass that mattered. From the Mass would flow the concept of social justice.
The Mass is the primary aspect of Catholics, but to many following that, is social action. The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in an online article "New Forms of Solidarity Towards Fraternal Inclusion, Integration and Innovation" (5 Feb 2020) writes that "Throughout his public life, Jesus not only preached about Justice, but also lived it through solidarity and mercy with his neighbors, but especially with the disenfranchised of his time. When asked which was the most important commandment, he answered with 'love the Lord, your God..., and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37).'" Solidarity, the article goes on to say, is one of the Church's three pillars of social doctrine. It is from this teaching, that Fr. Joseph Reiner would get the idea that would be important to changing the Church in Chicago and the nation by establishing CISCA. Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action would grow out of the Marian movement to be the face for, as the name states, Catholic Action.
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| Joseph Reiner, SJ |
In the early part of the twentieth century many Catholic Universities had Sodality associations which began as Marian devotion and apostolic activity. Under Popes Pius XI and XII the Sodality movements would take on an expanded role for social action, and Fr Reiner would expand that concept and establish a federation of sodality organizations for Chicago Catholic high schools and colleges--hence he established CISCA. The Sodality movements of one hundred years ago would become critical to the Church Solidarity movement, one of the three pillars of Catholic doctrine. Fr Reiner's great idea formed the coalition of the Chicago Sodality organizations with an intent on to promote Catholic action.
Hartnett says that Fr Daniel Lord's contribution to American Catholic education lay in "giving extra-curricular activities a religious orientation." However, Fr Reiner, according to Hartnett, took this and pioneered, a movement. Reiner had Lord give a retreat at Loyola in 1926 and from that retreat Reiner would get the idea to create CISCA. What Reiner did was to create a methodology, out of Lord's freewheeling thoughts, what would be called a four-ply system. Hartnett states that "Nothing happened, however, until Father Reiner applied his very apostolic but very practical and systematic mind and will to this challenge." Fr Reiner established four main committees or methods of action for the Sodality movement which can be summed up as: liturgy, mission support, literature, and social action. And since all that Lord knew of social action came from Reiner, Hartnett says that Reiner's social action program "filled a serious gap in Father Lord's sodality program." Hartnett would go on to say that the social action platform created by Fr Reiner was "devoted to extending the reign of Christ the King throughout the political and social orders." However, he goes further stating that by establishing the social action committee, Reiner was in line with current Catholic thought, I quote Hartnett: "Pius XII's encyclical Christ the King... gave this committee a special impetus and contemporary relevance." What is important is that Reiner in establishing these four courses of thought precipitated action by the student Sodality organization. Hartnett writes that one week of each month was centered on each theme. He goes on to say that "Father Reiner drew up a mimeographed page which he posted and distributed each week, outlining the
meaning, of the week, spiritually, the
objectives to be pursued and the
means to be adopted to achieve them." (Underlining in original copy of speech text.) In this, you can see the triumvirate of Reiner's overall thinking relating to action, and in the mind of Fr Reiner the three are interrelated, it is like educating, acting and establishing.
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| Fr Joseph Reiner, SJ |
Bielakowski, comes to the same conclusion, but has a different means and reason. Her dissertation begins with the following quote:
In March 1927 Vatican Secretary of State Rafael Cardinal Merry Del Val privately advised Jesuit Father General Wladimir Ledochowski that the Holy See viewed Jesuit universities in the United States as insufficiently Catholic in character. Ledochowski informed American Jesuit Provincials that, among the charges leveled, was that Jesuit educators exerted “practically no influence over the religious and spiritual welfare of the students.” In Chicago, Loyola University administrators responded to this warning by enlarging the Loyola student Sodality’s newly-established Catholic Action program into a hegemonic presence, not only on the Loyola Arts campus in Rogers Park, but throughout Chicago’s network of Catholic schools. By 1928 Loyola students headed a federation of 52 Chicago-area Catholic universities, colleges, and high schools, initially known as the Chicago Intercollegiate Conference on Religious Activities (CISCORA). (p. 1)
The meeting she quotes took place in March 1927, but almost a year earlier the 1926 Eucharistic Congress held in Chicago gave Loyola University a means to enlighten their students, through participation in the congress. My goodness, even Bielakowski had this to say about the Eucharistic Congress and its affect on Loyola (perhaps Dean Reiner was prescient to the Holy See comments that would come a year later):
The International Eucharistic Congress offered a perfect opportunity to re-create that reputation. Held in Chicago in the summer of 1926, it gathered the various layers of Catholics’ religious commitment—international, national, and local—mixed them, and charged them with urgency and excitement. Parading Chicago’s Catholic high school and college students on Soldier Field in front of visiting dignitaries, it invited Catholic youth to see themselves as an integral part of a vast, triumphal Church institution, united in reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. Likewise, it offered Catholic educational administrators the opportunity to display their students’ religious fidelity and zeal on an international stage. (p. 102)
Not only that, but it was in January 1927, three months before the Vatican Secretary of State made his complaint to the head of the Jesuit order about Jesuit Colleges in the US, that Robert Hartnett a then student at Loyola is quoted by Biewlakowski (the same Robert Hartnett who as a Jesuit provided an address at Loyola on Fr Reiner in 1965) as saying this to the Sodality organization at Loyola:
Our sodality has been too much of a touch-and-go affair,” Loyola student Robert Harnett declaimed in January 1927. It has to assume a much larger importance in our school life. It ought to ramify through all our other activities: fraternities, debates, recreation, sports—everything, including also our social life.’
Bielakowski goes on to say:
Arts College Dean Joseph Reiner, S.J., applauded the word “ramify”: indeed the idea, if not the diction, had been mainly his—and that idea was even more ambitious than Harnett initially suggested to the small group of Catholic students gathered in the chemistry room. They spoke of reorienting extracurricular life at Loyola University toward Catholic ideals. Reiner, however, saw the Sodality’s social and cultural ascendancy on campus as only a first step toward realizing the Catholic Action ideal of an assertive “lay apostolate” that would extend the Church’s influence throughout secular society. (bold by author)
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| CISCA Leadership |
The timing of the exchanges shows that Bielakwoski's main thesis is off. Reiner was instituting his idea of liturgy, mission support, literature, and social action at Loyola
before the Vatican condemnation. Coincidence is different that causation. What led to Joseph Reiner implementing his four ply approach was his belief that the Eucharistic is central to the faith and the faith requires action, particularly social action. Whatever the case may be, there was, as my wife would say, a Godincidence. Joseph Reiner, saw his instituted vision of the Sodality program as providing a Catholic culture for an extra-curricular activity. He likely realized an emerging coalescence around social action. As we know he had been involved with social action since the early part of the twentieth century when he contributed to the 1903
Our Sunday Visitor on "Jones and Smith Discuss Socialism. " The 1925 encyclical, the issues of income inequality, racism, lack of worker rights, religious discrimination, limited ecumenism, were all issues in the 1920's and in particular in the 1930's following the stock market crash of 1929. More important they were all issues in which Fr Reiner was involved. He could now work to expand his model of social action. While Bielakowski keeps up the political aspect to prove the thesis of her dissertation she does note: "Aside from the Sodality’s political value, Reiner’s interest in Catholic Action organization appears to have been sincere and genuine." (p. 97) It is quite clear to me that Fr Reiner has an obvious interest in social action, prior to the Vatican mandate; the dates are in his favor. His ideas preceded, but likely would assist Loyola in mitigating, if not out-right countering, the Vatican comments.
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| Dean Joseph Reiner, SJ |
After having formed his four-ply system for the Loyola Sodality, he took his activity to a whole other level and one that would have implications for the national Church and perhaps the United States. I think it best to depend on Hartnett, who was integrally involved, provide what happened next:
Then he [Reiner] go a bright idea:to call a day-long, diocesan-wide meeting to form an archdiocesan Sodality Union of Catholic colleges and universities to teardrop along the lines of his four-ply system. To everyone's surprise, the students of neighboring Catholic institutions responded enthusiastically to this invitation and proved themselves very articulate in discussing their religious concerns in public. Catholic collegians had never done anything like this before. This was the first such Sodality Union formed in the United States. (Hartnett)
This was the beginning of CISCORA, later CISCA. Johnson, in her book,
One in Christ, notes that "this meeting involved ninety-six representatives from twenty-three schools." Bielakowski indicates that this organization was crucial to showing that Jesuit authorities keeping a tab on the Univeristy were heading the Vatican order. She writes:
At Loyola, sodality “ramification” served, not only international Catholicism’s broader political and ideological interests, but also the university’s immediate needs. As Chapter 1 showed, to counteract Vatican allegations of eroding Catholic character at Jesuit institutions in the United States, Jesuit international and provincial supervision of Loyola University’s extracurriculum increased to the extent of scrutinizing student publications, thereby pushing Loyola administrators to organize and formalize censorship procedures that had formerly been casual and discretionary. Loyola’s administration, however, did not only seek to downplay the morally questionable aspects of student life, such as irreverent language; it also sought to demonstrate that Catholicism was integral to Jesuit education—and furthermore, that Loyola students enthusiastically implemented the Vatican’s “Catholic Action” agenda outside as well as inside the classroom. The re-vitalization and extension of the Loyola Sodality became an important part of this administrative agenda. Reflecting in 1937on CISCORA’s founding ten years earlier, former Loyola student Robert Hartnett—by then a Jesuit priest—acknowledged the federation’s origin in Jesuit anxieties regarding the religious character of extracurricular campus life. “In 1927, it could be said with no little justice: ‘Catholic students in Catholic colleges have till now formed organizations to promote journalism, dramatics, debating, athletics, dances, just about everything except their Catholicism,’” he told a student audience. “Thanks to Fathers Lord and Reiner, that accusation has been blotted out. The Lord be praised!” (p 96)
Bielakowski takes the view that the clergy exercised even greater oversight. Perhaps, but this goes along with her thesis, after all, that with the Vatican watching they had to play it right. She writes that in 1927 Reiner, still Dean, pushed as he had never before pushed.
And he pushed them. Before the school term ended in 1927, Reiner, acting with and through Harnett, not only propelled Loyola’s extracurricular religious organization, a chapter of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, toward a leading role on Loyola’s Arts campus, but also expanded it into Chicago Inter Student Conference on Religious Activities (CISCORA)—later Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action (CISCA)--an elaborate citywide federation of Catholic student organizations that included Mundelein College, De Paul University, and the four other colleges and 51 high schools that comprised Chicago’s system of Catholic youth education. Co-opting the rhetoric and values of collegiate “campus life,” the CISCORA federation’s program stressed student leadership and initiative in an effort to form “lay apostles”—outspoken Catholic leaders who nevertheless would focus and confine their activity within boundaries set by the clergy. In the early 1930s, these boundaries would grow more explicit, tightening administrative authority over student culture at Loyola and Mundelein, and—in the late 1930s—De Paul. (pp 95-96)
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| Fr J Reiner, SJ |
As we know the four-ply system established by Fr Reiner became the basis on which Loyola's Sodality would function, and later form the basis when he established CISCORA, (later CISCA). Bielakowski talks about students being called to be counter-cultural, and called to be leaders, but this required careful and concerted balancing with clerical input. "Reiner intended the Loyola Sodality and CISCORA, its extension, to re-interpret “campus life” values of student leadership, initiative, solidarity, and obedience in terms of the Catholic Action “lay apostolate”-- a catchphrase generally defined as 'the participation of the laity in the mission of the clergy.'" (p. 103) What the Church realized is that for it to be relevant in the industrializing world lay persons would "have to take the lead in shaping the values, organization, and tone of the secular society in which they moved, making that society more accordant with recent Papal statements on social justice and morality in industrial societies." (Bielakowski, p 103) Bielakowski would further expand on this idea 'For Chicago’s Catholic students, this leadership obligation could involve welcoming an African-American into their parish in defiance of popular hostility, distributing Catholic literature on buses and street corners, rebuking friends for lewd conversation, or visibly protesting movies with sexual content.' (p. 103) "However, in order to become 'lay apostles,' students would have to muster the courage
to openly oppose prevailing social and cultural trends—to set rather than submit to secular social patterns—while at the same time remaining obedient followers of the Church hierarchy that supplied them with ideals and principles." (p. 103-104)
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Article in Loyola Newspaper
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The kicker to all of this, as she would go on to note, is the application of varied principles and values, that these Catholic lay students, women and men, would have to defy, but yet submit, lead and do all in the "appropriate context." (Bielakowski, p 104) "Cultivating this delicate balance of defiance, submission, and leadership in students involved careful attention to character formation", she would go on to say. (p. 104) She then claims that "Indeed, Reiner based his 1933 'Plan for Catholic Social Action' on a central premise of Jesuit education: that 'attitudes are more important than knowledge.'" What we see is the culmination of Joseph Reiner's thoughts on education, and action, leaving it to the laity, but within boundaries. He believed that young men and women educated to learn, discern and act would follow the proper course of action whether it be liturgy, missions, literature, or social action.
CISCA would go on to spur action in Chicago, that would have relevance throughout the nation. As Sparr explains, there was at the same time a desire by some Catholic leaders, including Daniel Lord, SJ, and Francis Talbot, SJ, a belief that a "Catholic-Christian orthodoxy offered the only standards, the only fixed body of unchanging truths capable of saving the world from chaos." (p. 18) What they saw, was a world "menaced by war, depression, class struggle, and philosophical and spiritual decay." (Sparr p. 17). The Church criticized both capitalism and communism. As the 1930's approached CISCORA would find itself moving forward and with a literary basis to help it move along. In fact, it was moving so well that Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Sheil would ask that the organization be moved from Loyola (as the lead) and become apart of the CYO. In this action, Fr Reiner would cease to be Dean in 1931 and take on the role of CISCA moderator full time. It is in this role that he would spend the last three years of his life.
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| Fr Reiner |
CISCA became an influential body in Chicago, and interestingly for its formative years women tended to be the main lay student leaders. CISCA would become a social action agency. There were a number of areas in which it operated, but let me identify a few. First, after the 1929 stock market collapse the Great Depression started. While Archbishop Mundelein was concerning himself with contraception, Reiner was overseeing CISCA, and promoting a different doctrine foreign to the United States. He was promoting a system not of wealth and privilege, but one of service and action. Service, in his mind what could create and define and individual, it was a different kind of wealth. He understood that service was important to the human race, and to him it did not take
psychological studies to prove its worth to the spirit, body and mind. It reminds me of the saying that a millionaire on his death bed does not talk about the million he did not make. Reiner understood that his idea of service was unique and different. Bielakowski makes the comment this way: "Reiner felt that Catholic students should be educated to admire “men and women who share and sacrifice rather than acquire and hold, who serve the common welfare rather than…. promote their personal advantages…” (p 106) Later in her dissertation she says much the same: "Catholic Action ideology supported this indictment of middle-class values, as Catholic educators denounced familiar ideological enemies—individualism and materialism—and called for a prioritization of social values above material self-interest." (p. 247) Reiner and Lord were saying much like Saint John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have said about run amok lassie faire capitalism. Fr. Daniel Lord, SJ would indict both that form of capitalism and Marxism in a speech at Mundelein College in 1935, when he claimed both ideologies replaced Christian thought, and that Solidarity and the other two legs of Catholic social action would assist in bringing about a more just society.
Second, the growth of CISCA also corresponded with the formation of the Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s Catholic Worker Movement. The nation was deep into the Great Depression, and activists like Catholic Worker and CISCA were promoting fair labor, worker rights, and the right to unionize. Of the three young men who would form the Catholic Worker movement in Chicago, two were from Loyola and the other from the University of Chicago. Yet, according to Sparr and Hartnett all three had some involvement with CISCSA, although Ed Marciniak was perhaps the most active at the time. (Hartnett; and Sparr p. 118) Sparr offered this: “Chicago offered concrete opportunities for Marciniak and other young lay Catholics to put their faith into practice.” (p. 119) He goes on to note that the greatest of these was CISCA, “the city-wide federation of Catholic high school and college Sodalities and other student groups. The organization was formed by Loyola Jesuit Joseph Reiner in 1927….” (p 118). He goes on to say that Joseph Reiner was one of number of influential Chicago area clerics in the 1930’s and 1940’s who dedicated their careers to the formation of lay Catholic leaders.” (p. 118). Quoting figures, Sparr says that by 1935, CISCA numbered over 20,000 persons “with nearly all of Chicago’s 50 Catholic high schools and eight Catholic colleges and universities represented. (p. 118) CISCA leaders would distribute copies of the Catholic Worker newspaper to workers, and go on to volunteer in city hospitals and community centers. In the 1940’s CISCA led the integration of Chicago’s rollerskating rinks. (Sparr p 119) During his senior year at Loyola and active in CISCA Marciniak with Alex Reser would open, in 1938, the Chicago Catholic Worker House. (Sparr, p. 119) This is part of the legacy of CISCA, but there is more, on this connection, but first it is important to know that what Marciniak, a son of a grocer and steelworker, in which Sparr says that Marciniak found important was the theology called the Mystical Body of Christ. (p. 118)
Third, is the doctrine that would promote action. The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ is at both simple and complex. It is, however, what compelled Marciniak and others into social justice. This connection, to Marciniak, was his awakening. The Mystical Body doctrine was developed, according to Johnson, within the liturgical movement, a movement of which Fr Virgil Michel, OSB of St John's University was highly involved. (p. 54) Under the Mystical Body doctrine, all are one in Christ, and thus an act against one is an act against Christ. A very basic concept, but to the young men and women it was radical. They saw a Catholicism that "as the priests offered Christ through the mass, the laity offered Christ through their actions. The student, worker, and parent mattered as much as the priests in the Church's life and the extension of Christ's reign on earth." (Johnson p. 54) Johnson says that Sr Himebaugh was the doctrine's biggest advocate (p. 54), although not a theologian she relied on Virgil Michel, OSB of St John's University in Collegeville for the theology behind this doctrine. Johnson says that when Himebaugh proposed this to Reiner, he was skeptical wondering if CISCAN's would understand that much. (p. 55) Fr. Virgil Michel, would teach the concept to Himebaugh and Fr Reiner's successor, Fr Carrabine, SJ, and would then be their theological sounding board. (Johnson, p. 55) It is important to note that Carrabine thought that Archbishop Mundelein's heresy hunters would strike down the work, but Virgil Michel of St John's would worked through the issues and give his imprimatur to the essay's prepared by Sr Himebaugh for the CISCAN's. The whole concept apparently rested on a monk at St John's. Johnson says that Reiner failed to promote the Mystical Body doctrine, but she does say "While Reiner might have moved in that direction, he died on October 13 [he died on Oct 14, and her is likely from Fortman's work which contained this error] 1934." p. 53)
However, Bielakowski believes that Fr Reiner fully engaged the doctrine of the Mystical Body:
A fundamental step was the equation of the student body with the theology of the transcendent Mystical Body of Christ. If college students already interpreted their social lives in terms of individual submission to the “student body,” then, Reiner suggested, they were only one step away from understanding themselves as members of Christ’s Mystical Body, involving the sublimation of personal identity and desires into the collective will, which was identified with God’s will. Thus Reiner’s “Program for Catholic Social Action” explicitly aimed to “place the natural group instinct on a supernatural basis, expanding it till it includes all the children of God and all the brethren of Christ.” What remained, Reiner thought, was somehow to manipulate this pre-existing peer culture toward the goal of preparing students to structure their social and economic lives according to Catholic ideals. As in campus life, Reiner expected this perception or “spirit” of supernatural community to have practical consequences for the individual. In college, commitment to the “common good” of the institutional peer group theoretically shaped an individual student’s lifestyle—dictating his or her use of time and money, choice of clothing, public expression of opinions, and so forth. Similarly, Reiner presented Catholic Action theology in terms of pervasive community obligation, teaching that “[e]very Catholic, in virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, is bound to shape both his personal and social life according to the principles of Christ in whose mystical body he is incorporated.” (p.105)
This is a radical thought, and one in which he would engage the CISCANS. What is interesting is that Johnson understood Reiner's pedagogical methods stating that "Reiner believed his students would advance Christ's teaching by practicing the Catholic Action dictum of seeing a situation, judging what needed to be done, and most importantly, acting on that judgement." However, what she would go on to say is the most critical that the Mystical Body of Christ was the background of his work:
He [Reiner] knew the importance of mass meetings, a key part of Ciscora's educational plan, but did not want students to think that attending a meeting and experiencing the "emotional thrill" of ideas was Catholic Action. For Reiner, only personal involvement--not fundraising or discussion, but empathizing with others--could unlock Christ's love. Unless students like Christ, engaged physically with others, their experience would not be a "socially vital experience that will carry over and be lasting," or "the charity that is exemplified in the life of Christ and that is impressed upon us by the doctrines of His religion." (p. 55)
That sounds to me a great deal like the Body of Christ doctrine. Christ's example is what mattered to Fr Reiner and this takes us to perhaps the most critical involvement of CISCA--integration of racial issues. While Archbishop Mundelein was worried about contraception, and was lax on racial integration, Auxiliary Bishop Sheil was more understanding of racial integration, and so was Fr Reiner. Dr. Arthur Falls, was an African-American Catholic and pushed for integration within the Church and society as a whole. While Dean at Loyola, Reiner "encouraged cooperation with the interracial federation and taught students "that the members of all races and nations are brothers and sisters in Christ" to cultivate "attitude of tolerance and charity toward all." (Johnson, p. 55) This sounds much like the doctrine of the Mystical Body to me, the doctrine Johnson said he did not accept. Reiner would connect Falls'e Federated Colored Catholics (FCC) group and his involvement with the Urban League with CISCORA. (Johnson, p 42). These organizations, with other Catholic groups, would begin holding monthly meetings on racial issues in 1934. (Johnson p. 42)
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Dr Arthur Falls, with Patient
Source: Johnson, p 11 |
CISCA would engage the Catholic Worker movement and other Catholic organizations to bring about integration in Chicago, and with ripple effects throughout the nation. Peter Maurin, when visiting Chicago in 1934 stayed with Arthur Falls. (Johnson p. 54) CISCA, as Johnson says, "with its desire to bring Catholic faith to bear on public life while emphasizing individuals' identity as part of a larger whole through the liturgy, was part of a shift among Catholics nationally toward engaging in social issues." (p. 51) It was this shifting opinion and the boots on the ground that gave Reiner's social justice army a say in the major issue of the time. Reiner's army of would allow the spread of information, and provide encounters. Johnson says it was Dorothy Day who had Falls contact Daniel Lord, SJ, (p. 52) to obtain assistance in the push for integration. How the timing worked, I do not know, but Falls knew Fr Reiner through the FCC and interracial commission, and would find that Reiner was the one who had engaged the students who would assist his movement into social action. In the 1930's Falls' group would connect with the Catholic Worker, and Falls would purchase their newspaper. Thus, there was a connection between CISCA and Catholic Worker movements, to assist the Federated Colored Catholics and other organizations in the difficult move to integration and racial justice.
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| Dorothy Day |
CISCA, which was established by Fr Reiner, began to change attitudes. CISCA together with the Catholic Worker movement would partner with Arthur Falls to work on integration within the Church of Chicago, and by extension the nation due to Chicago's national importance. Falls was encouraged by Maurin, Day and Virgil Michel, "all who supported interracial justice and supported Falls personally." (Johnson, p. 69) At the same time as CISCA and Catholic Worker were focusing on racial issues. These two groups, with other lay supporters influenced priests and nuns to develop friendships with one another. This lay movement, started by CISCA and the Catholic Worker "would allow interracial activists to flourish." (Johnson p. 69) What is critical here, is that Fr Reiner's position that personal involvement was required to bring about social justice is what was key to move this forward. As Fr Reiner said what was important was the sublimation of the personal to the collective will. It gets us back to the earlier quotation by Reiner, noted in Johnson's work, when Reiner said: "Unless students like Christ, engaged physically with others, their experience would not be a 'socially vital experience that will carry over and be lasting,'" Reiner understood what was required for a socially lasting movement.
While Fr Reiner passed away in 1934, the work of integration was just taking on steam in a nation used to segregation and a thought counter to the Declaration of Independence, that all are created equal. CISCA would play a large part, although there were times when they did not buy fully into Fall's "militant approach for immediate change" (Johnson. p 162), nonetheless, they were integral and active in promoting the long road for integration. Racial integration was slow, although certainly discrimination still exists. Fr Reiner was right--attitudes need to change. To change attitudes, and to bring about social action that will carry over and be long lasting all takes time. Fr Reiner as a sociologist and historian understood the time required, and that means a measured approach.
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| Peter Maurin |
I fully appreciate taking a measured approach. History is littered with the debris of ideas which moved too quickly. It is attitude, perhaps following education that will lead to acceptance and then action. I saw it in my own work as a City Planner, and recognize it in larger historical events. And, I think Fr Reiner understood that too, which you can see in this comment by Fr Hartnett, who as a student at Loyola when CISCORA was formed, "He was incessantly bent on improving students, on urging them to fulfill what he felt Christ wanted them to be--intellectually, morally, socially, spiritually.
And, he had a deep-seated passion, kept under control, for social justice." (Bold and italics by author) The key segment of the last sentence is "
kept under control". Move too fast or push too hard and all you worked for could be lost. Martin Luther King, Jr understood this too. Perhaps Fr Reiner learned the lesson the hard way, as some of us do. Perhaps he pushed too far on one or more of his committees while in Cincinnati, and as Hartmann says this led him to be posted to the more friendly confines of Wisconsin. CISCA was the pinnacle and culmination of Fr Reiner's life. CISCAN's and their involvement in social justice occurred as Fr Reiner had suspected with dependence on the individual to see, judge and act. They took his word and became more personally involved. The involvement of CISCA in the major social issue of the time, racism, is the greatest gift and legacy which Fr Reiner could have left Chicago and the nation. He taught his students to learn, discern and act. It would be a stretch to say that CSICA solved the racial issues in Catholic Church of Chicago, and the city as a whole, but I do not think it a stretch that it helped shorten and move the Church and nation along a path for more racial justice. Fr Reiner knew what many others failed to recognize, that racial justice required a change in attitude and personal involvement--a relationship with other people and this would deepen a person's relationship with Christ.
Fr Reiner had a remarkable life. The creation of his four-ply system which integrated liturgy, missions, literature and social action would flow from the Loyola Sodality to the pioneering CISCA and provide its meaning and strength. The students themselves were part of the Eucharist, in a metaphorical sense, but no less important sense. The work in social action carried on by the young men and women who were taught to learn and who grew due to to CISCA is a reminder of the power of one man following his blinding light experience in Innsbruck, that he would see as the grace of God. CISCA recognized his see, judge, act, but more so his mission of service as the ultimate measure of mankind. It recognized liturgy, mission, literature, and social action. In the greater Chicago area it was well understood that a CISCAN could be depended upon. Hartnett quotes a Jesuit who thought the organization was rather a bunch of baloney until he realized that the people he could depend had been in CISCA. Overtime CISCA has been a major part of the body of work on Chicago social justice in the last century. Bielkowski dissertation, Sparr's 1990 work, and Johnson's 2018 work, and others all point to this. Fr Reiner in establishing CISCA to promote the social justice movements in the Church and larger society had an impact on worker rights, young men and women to act, and racial justice. My older brother, Joe, said, that if Fr Reiner had lived longer he would be a saint. I thought of that comment while working on the birth control section of my prior post and my first impression was no way, not with him pushing papal teaching. Then it occurred to me that many saints caused "trouble" for the hierarchy during their life, but that "trouble" is what would lead to their sainthood. An emerging example is Dorothy Day, who even Cardinal Dolan now wants to make a saint, this in spite of the fact that the then New York hierarchy put roadblocks up to her work. History has taught, unfortunately, that popes and bishops tend to put up more barriers than they take down. Pushing the barrier has led to many saints.
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| Front page K Johnson Monograph |
It has been a pleasure to push my mind by researching and writing my three blog posts on my great uncle, Fr. Joseph Stephen Reiner, SJ. Even though his parents owned a tavern, he was a teetotaler, he did not engage in normal activities that define an American (see Hartnett), so he was probably considered an oddball by some. Yet this "oddball" did much to move the Church and society. I just hope my meager abilities have done him justice. Fr Reiner was a man who has passed to history, but who has left a mark in the larger history of the nation. He is one of those souls whose mark is little known but indelible. He had the idea to establish a fraternity of the Chicago area Sodality organizations that would change that city. The mark was in the men and women he touched, but more importantly in the actions they took. Although, as Hartnett says, "The long-term influence of a priest like Fr Reiner is known to God alone."
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| Prayer Card, Front |
Fr Reiner is a man the Church could use today. The clericalism and paternalism that has enveloped the Church is negative and destructive; the priests, and the hierarchy need to realize that the Church is the people. And, as Fr Reiner would say, when people act for justice they act for Christ. Fr Reiner understood, and put into action what it meant to be Catholic. He saw social action as being part of the message of the Eucharist. After seeing the shining light in Austria his eyes were focused on the message God delivered to him. He whole approach culminated in his integrated four ply system, the creation of CISCA, and the movement of these concepts to service being the highest calling. I will conclude with a quote by Fr Robert Hartnett, SJ in perhaps the most fitting tribute to Fr Reiner:
When Father Reiner died the then Provincial, Father Cloud, sent a letter to all houses of the pre-division Chicago Province asking prayers, not for the repose of his soul, but for the Province. The Provincial said that the Province had suffered the loss of a priest who had attained to the highest levels of Jesuit spirituality. In nearly forty years, I can recall no similar attestation of a deceased Jesuit's holiness.
2020, 5 Feb. "New Forms of Solidarity Towards Fraternal Inclusion, Integration and Innovation." The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, online article
1990 Sparr, Arnold. To Promote, Defend and Redeem: The Catholic Literary Revival and the Transformation of American Catholicism 1920-1960. Greenwood Press, NY NY
2018 Johnson, Karen. One in Christ Oxford University Press. NY, NY.
Bielakowski, Rae, "You Are in the World: Catholic Campus Life at Loyola University Chicago, Mundelein College, and De Paul University, 1924-1950" (2009). Dissertations. 161.
Fortman, Edmund, SJ 1989 "Lineage: A Biographical History of the Chicago Province, Chicago, Loyola University Press pp 49-51. Family archive from Joseph R Sweeney
"Fr Joseph Reiner: A Great Sodality Leader." "The Queens Work". Family archive from Joseph R Sweeney (no date on clipping)
Harnett, RC, SJ April 14, 1965 lecture at Loyola University Community Conference on "Rev Joseph Reiner, SJ, 1881-1934 Dean of College of Arts and Sciences Loyola University 1923-1931". Family archive from Joseph R Sweeney
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