One Drunk to Another Some Bum from St. Louis
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · An imagined table in the summer of 1952, after the stroke that made it hard for him to read: a tape recorder for listening to drafts, the typed pages and a magnifying glass. Not drawn from a photograph.

St. Louis and New York · 1950–1955

Stuff of the saints

A stroke made it hard for him to read while Bill W. was writing the Twelve and Twelve. Three years later AA’s convention came to his own city, and cheered him to the lectern.

“Father Ed is made of the stuff of the saints. Now here he is.”

Bill W., introducing him at St. Louis, July 3, 1955 · Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1957

A little Jesuit

At AA’s General Service Conference in New York in April 1952, Bill W. closed with a benediction naming the people who had lit candles for AA. One was “a little Jesuit, Ed Dowling, laboring among his flock, lame and relatively obscure.” That spring Bill was writing Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and he sent Father Ed his drafts. For the first time, he asked for something simple to read on the Spiritual Exercises. There was only “the dry text,” Father Ed answered, and he sent Bill an edition by an Anglican clergyman, W. H. Longridge.

In June a retinal stroke put him in the hospital for nearly a week and made it hard to read. Friends taped the drafts so he could hear them, and his sister Anna read to him. “My retinal stroke, sans pain and sans labor, is giving me an enjoyable loaf,” he wrote to Bill in July.

The book came out in April 1953. That same month he spoke to the National Clergy Conference on Alcoholism and set the Steps beside the Exercises, part by part (Step for step). Should a priest join AA, he asked them? “Frankly, I don’t think the Church needs saving nearly as much as the man.”

At Christmas he wrote to Bill and Lois W. about an experiment: a Cana Conference for couples from AA, from Cana, from Divorcées Anonymous, and from Recovery Inc., Dr. Abraham Low’s self-help group for people with mental troubles, whose St. Louis group, AA’s newsletter says, he had opened in an office of The Queen’s Work. A year later he wrote “How to Enjoy Being Miserable,” which ends: “May you enjoy a miserable Christmas! No other kind can really be merry.”

In July 1955 AA held its twentieth-anniversary convention in his own city. On Sunday morning, July 3, after Bill’s introduction, “A great cheer of welcome greeted Father Ed Dowling as, indifferent to his grievous lameness, he made his way to the lectern.” He began, “I forgot to bring my store teeth,” and went on to Bill “sitting in that chair, and Dr. Bob, whose angel is probably sitting on that oddly misplaced empty chair.” More of the talk is in Good for God and Wit’s End, in Suggestions Only, and the line that names part 7 comes from it too.

Listen Stuff of the saints About 1 minute

April 1953, to a room of priests

Step for step

Speaking to a national conference of priests on alcoholism, Father Ed laid the Twelve Steps beside the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the Jesuits’ month of prayer, part by part. Here is his pairing, in his words.

From his talk “Catholic Asceticism and the Twelve Steps,” printed in the conference’s Blue Book for 1953, as transcribed on the AA History Lovers list and quoted by Glenn C. The Steps are summed up, not quoted. In the same talk he said it was a priest alcoholic who first showed him the likeness (A sense of presence has the Jesuit friend). Quotations are short excerpts.

  1. Steps 1–3

    Powerless over alcohol; came to believe; turned our will and our lives over.

    The Foundation

    “A.A. bases dependence on a rather concrete specific type of experience, drunkenness”

    Ignatius starts from man as a creature, dependent on God. AA starts from drink.

  2. Step 4

    A searching and fearless moral inventory.

    The contemplation of sin

    “The parallelism is rather striking.”

    Sin in the angels, in Adam and Eve, in others, and in myself.

  3. Step 5

    Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being.

    Confession

    The Exercises require it, he said, as all Catholic retreats do.

  4. Steps 6–7

    Entirely ready to have God remove our defects; humbly asked Him to.

    Reatus culpae, the guilt of sin

    “I think the sixth step is the one which divides the men from the boys in A.A. It is love of the cross.”

  5. Steps 8–9

    A list of the people we had harmed, and amends to them.

    Reatus poenae, the obligation of restitution

    “…a list of those people he has offended and whose bills he hasn’t paid.”

  6. Step 10

    A continuing inventory.

    No pair

    He didn’t match this Step with anything in the Exercises.

  7. Step 11

    Prayer and meditation, for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out.

    The second, third and fourth weeks

    “…a true and accurate description of the positive aspects of Christian asceticism…”

    The weeks spent on the life of Christ.

  8. Step 12

    Carrying the message, and practicing these principles in all our affairs.

    Christian apostolic work

    “In our apostolic work we should be an instrument in God’s hands.”

    Not a part of the Exercises: he set Steps 11 and 12 beside the positive side of Christian asceticism, and called it “a rather limited parallel.”

Twenty minutes

Bill had told a priest the Steps took him twenty minutes to write, and to Father Ed that was the point: “Twenty minutes sounds reasonable under the theory of divine help.” Bill’s own tellings say about half an hour.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How he read Bill’s drafts after the stroke, how he quit smoking, and Dr. Bob’s last words as he told them.

The tape and the reader

In June 1952, Robert Fitzgerald writes, Father Ed told Bill he had been in the hospital for nearly a week with a retinal stroke that made it hard to read, and that friends had taped the drafts of the Traditions so he could criticize them. He was still planning to sail for England and Ireland in August.

In July Bill sent the chapters on the first four Steps, with news that a spirit calling himself Boniface had turned up. Would this be licit contact in Father Ed’s book, he asked? Father Ed answered on July 24. His sister would go abroad with him: “My sister, Anna, is going to be my eyes in England and Ireland—to take dictation, etc.” As for Boniface, he was wary: “I still feel, like Macbeth, that these folks tell us the truth in small matters in order to fool us in larger.”

Three minutes without a cigarette

He had tried retreat after retreat to give up smoking. In 1953 he told the priests what finally worked. AA, he reasoned, doesn’t make a man quit drinking; it makes him quit thinking about drinking. So he told himself, “I won’t try to quit smoking but I will, with God’s help, postpone the thought of smoking for three minutes.” He said it had been three or four years since he had thought of himself smoking.

Then he ate instead. He wrote to Bill that he was getting as “fat as a hog,” Fitzgerald says, and his weight went from 242 pounds to 167 and back up, like a yo-yo.

Dr. Bob’s last words

Dr. Bob S., AA’s other founder, died in November 1950. In his last talk, to AA’s convention in Cleveland that July, he asked members to keep the program simple: “Let’s not louse it all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind…” When Bill last saw him, he said, “Remember, Bill, let’s not louse this thing up. Let’s keep it simple!”

In 1953 Father Ed gave the priests a shorter version as Dr. Bob’s last speech: “Don’t louse it up with psychiatry.” Two years later, on the St. Louis stage, he gave Dr. Bob’s angel the empty chair.

Sources
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “When A.A. Came of Age” (the St. Louis convention and Dr. Bob’s last words) and “Religion Looks at Alcoholics Anonymous” (Bill W.’s introduction and Father Ed’s talk).
  • Bill W., “A Benediction from Bill.” AA Grapevine, June 1952, in its report on the General Service Conference of April 1952 (scan at silkworth.net).
  • Edward Dowling, S.J., “Catholic Asceticism and the Twelve Steps.” National Clergy Conference on Alcoholism, Blue Book, 1953, as transcribed on the AA History Lovers list (message 1322), and as quoted by Glenn C.
  • Glenn C., Father Ed Dowling: Bill Wilson’s Sponsor. Draft of May 1, 2015, posted in his archive at Indiana University South Bend. Chapter 3 (the Christmas 1953 letter), chapter 31 (Boniface and Macbeth), chapter 33 (the 1952 letters and the stroke, quoted from Robert Fitzgerald, The Soul of Sponsorship, Hazelden, 1995), chapter 34 (the 1953 talk), chapter 35 (“How to Enjoy Being Miserable,” Action Now, December 1954) and chapters 37 to 39 (the convention). Quotations are from the online text.
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 20 (Dr. Bob’s last talk and Bill’s last visit).
  • “Father Ed Dowling — Bill W.’s Confidant and Friend.” Box 4-5-9, August–September 2006. Recovery Inc. and The Queen’s Work.
  • Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., “Father Ed and A.A.’s Bill W.” Catholic Digest, April 1991, as transcribed at silkworth.net. His smoking and his weight.