Illustration · An imagined upstairs room at the 24th Street club on a night of sleet in November 1940: one chair turned toward the bed, a wet black hat on its seat and a cane hooked over its back. Not drawn from a photograph.

New York and St. Louis · 1940–1941

A sense of presence

He had been writing to AA’s office since spring. Late one night in November he climbed the stairs at the 24th Street club, one step at a time.

“A Jesuit friend and I have been struck by the similarity of the A.A. twelve steps and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.”

Father Ed to Bill W., as Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., told it in 1991 · Catholic Digest

Up the stairs

By November 1940 Father Ed was no stranger to AA’s office in New York. He had been writing to it since May, and St. Louis had held its first regular meeting on October 30. The letters are set out in Before the knock. Why he called on Bill W. so late in the evening, AA’s newsletter says, has never been explained, nor whether he came to New York only to meet him. Lois W. and Glenn C. both say that he came to meet Bill.

It was about ten o’clock on a night of sleet. Old Tom, the club’s caretaker, went up to tell Bill that there was “some bum from St. Louis” to see him. Bill’s room was on the second floor. Climbing the stairs caused Father Ed enormous pain, Glenn C. writes, but he went up “one laborious step at a time, instead of asking him to come downstairs.”

He said he came from the Jesuits in St. Louis, who had been reading the Big Book. He and a Jesuit friend had been struck by how much the Twelve Steps were like the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. When Bill admitted he knew nothing of the Exercises, Pass It On says, Father Ed was delighted. They talked. Bill told him of his hopes and plans, and of his anger, despair and mounting frustrations, and unburdened himself of things he had found, until then, no way to speak of. Bill later counted that evening as his Fifth Step, admitting “the exact nature of our wrongs” to another human being.

Father Ed listened, and quoted the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst.” When Bill asked whether there was never to be any satisfaction, the priest answered, “Never. Never any.” Before he left, Robert Fitzgerald wrote in 1991, he told Bill that there was a force in him that was all his own, and that had never been on this earth before. That night, for the first time in months, Bill slept soundly.

It was the start of twenty years of letters and visits, and Bill came to speak of him as his spiritual sponsor. Bill’s side of the night is told in About fifty homes, in Number One Man.

Listen A sense of presence About 1 minute

1940, from his side

Before the knock

Old Tom announced a bum from St. Louis. By then the man on the stairs had been to an AA meeting, read the Big Book, written to AA’s office and helped start a group. Here is his year.

The letters are quoted by Dawn Eden Goldstein in a 2023 excerpt from her 2022 biography of Father Ed. Other accounts put his first meeting in March, or have him reading the Big Book first; Come and get it compares them. Quotations are short excerpts.

February · Chicago
He goes with an alcoholic friend to an AA meeting, buys the Big Book there, and reads it on the train to New York, where he is to give lectures on democracy.
April or May
A fellow Jesuit, Father John Markoe, points out connections between the Twelve Steps and the Spiritual Exercises.
May 11
Letter · Father Ed to the Alcoholic Foundation, New York
“I had the rare privilege of attending the business meeting of the AA”
He encloses a dollar for pamphlets, and adds that he knows “nine or ten prospects here in St. Louis.”
June 11
Letter · New York to Father Ed
Ruth Hock, AA’s secretary, answers at Bill W.’s direction.
June 18
Letter · Father Ed to New York
“In general, I run into the difficulty of the unwillingness of the people concerned to admit they are alcoholic.”
July 9
Letter · New York to Father Ed
Signed by Ruth Hock but written by Bill himself, Goldstein judges. It begins “Dear Sir,” and asks “whether any religion is represented in addition to the Catholic?”
July 17
Letter · Father Ed to New York
“The only one of the group who is a Catholic is a Mrs. [C.]”
October 17 · St. Louis
He gives a retreat at the Jesuits’ White House retreat house for the St. Louis group’s organizer and four members from Chicago.
October 30 · St. Louis
The first regular meeting of St. Louis AA, at a member’s home.
November · New York
Late one night, he climbs the stairs at the 24th Street club.

A stranger at the door?

To old Tom he was a bum from St. Louis, and Bill, by his own telling, took him for another drunk until he saw the collar. Yet AA’s office had been writing to him for six months, and in July, Goldstein believes, Bill himself had written to ask about his group.

For a closer look

Go deeper

What he told Bill about hunger and thirst, who the Jesuit friend was, and Bill’s first visit to St. Louis.

Hunger and thirst

Pass It On tells the exchange this way. Father Ed quoted Matthew, “Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst,” and pointed out that God’s chosen were always marked by their yearnings, their restlessness, their thirst. When Bill asked if there was never to be any satisfaction, the priest almost snapped back, “Never. Never any,” then went on more gently, calling it “divine dissatisfaction,” the thing that would keep Bill reaching.

Robert Fitzgerald’s 1991 telling has the same words with a comma: “Never, Never any.” In Matthew the verse ends with a promise, that those who hunger and thirst shall be filled. Neither telling has him finish it.

The Jesuit friend

In Robert Fitzgerald’s telling, Father Ed says that “a Jesuit friend and I” had noticed the likeness between the Steps and the Exercises. Fitzgerald doesn’t name the friend. Dawn Eden Goldstein writes that in the spring of 1940 a fellow Jesuit, Father John Markoe, pointed out connections between the two to Father Ed, so he may be the one.

A year later the Jesuits showed Bill a chart comparing the Steps and the Exercises. It was almost certainly, Goldstein writes, a modified version of a chart Markoe had made more than ten years before, which showed how a thirty-day retreat in the Exercises could be fitted into eight days. The chart Bill saw has not survived.

A year later

On October 22, 1941, Bill flew into St. Louis on a speaking tour, his first visit to the group Father Ed had helped start, then nearly a year old. Father Ed met him at the Lambert airfield and took him to The Queen’s Work, where the atmosphere, Bill was relieved to find, was one of “delightful informality.”

The Jesuits asked him about the Big Book and the Steps, and showed him their chart. Bill had a question of his own: “Please tell me — who is this fellow Ignatius?”

Sources

Dawn Eden Goldstein, “Father Ed and the First Catholic Outreach to Alcoholics Anonymous.” Church Life Journal, University of Notre Dame, March 24, 2023, adapted from her Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.’s Spiritual Sponsor (Orbis Books, 2022). His 1940 letters, the Chicago meeting, Father John Markoe, the retreat and the first St. Louis meeting.
Dawn Eden Goldstein, “The Day Fr. Ed Dowling, SJ, Brought AA’s Bill Wilson to Meet the St. Louis Jesuits.” Jesuits Central and Southern, April 10, 2023. Bill W.’s visit of October 22, 1941, and the chart.
Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., “Father Ed and A.A.’s Bill W.” Catholic Digest, April 1991, as transcribed at silkworth.net.
Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 13 (the night, as Bill remembered it, and “Never. Never any.”).
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. Bill W.’s memory of the night, from the 1955 convention.
Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Groups, 1979. Chapter 12.
Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book). Fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. Chapter 5 (the Fifth Step).
“Father Ed Dowling — Bill W.’s Confidant and Friend.” Box 4-5-9, August–September 2006. The visit, and why it has never been explained.
Glenn C., Father Ed Dowling: Bill Wilson’s Sponsor. Draft of May 1, 2015, posted in his archive at Indiana University South Bend. Chapter 1 (the stairs). Quotations are from the online text.
Glenn C., Heroes of Early Black AA: Their Stories and Their Messages. Hindsfoot Foundation, 2017. Chapter 1.