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Illustration · An imagined bulletin board in a seminary hallway about 1930, crowded with pinned newspaper clippings, under a hanging lamp. Not drawn from a photograph.

Florissant, Chicago, Kansas and St. Louis · 1919–1939

The Queen’s Work

Seventeen years of Jesuit training brought a crisis of faith, a back he said would turn to stone by thirty, a failed exam, and a desk at a Catholic magazine.

“Up to the age of 21 my spirituality, my religion, my faith was a comfortable, unchallenged nursery habit.”

Father Ed, in a talk, as Glenn C. quotes him · Father Ed Dowling: Bill Wilson’s Sponsor, 2015

The long way round

The Jesuits train their men slowly. Ed Dowling entered St. Stanislaus Seminary at Florissant, outside St. Louis, in 1919, for two years as a novice, and in the second of them, about 1920, his faith came apart. It took him about two years to work through, Glenn C. writes.

Sometime in his seminary years, walking along the Missouri River, he felt a pain in one of his legs. It was the start of a severe, crippling arthritis, centered in his back, that was never cured; walking was one of the things that hurt most. When he reached thirty, he said, his spine would “turn to stone.” Glenn C. can date its start only to somewhere between about 1920 and 1928. In time he walked with a cane.

He studied philosophy at Saint Louis University, taking his bachelor’s degree in 1924 and a master’s in 1925, then taught at Loyola Academy, the Jesuit high school on Chicago’s North Side, from 1926 to 1929, and made friends there for life. In 1929 he went to St. Mary’s College in Kansas for theology, and in his second year he failed his Latin oral exam. The question was whether angels have bodies.

He was ordained a priest in St. Louis on June 25, 1931, by Archbishop John J. Glennon, at thirty-two. The next year the Jesuits sent him to the central office of the Sodality of Our Lady, a Catholic devotional society for students, to help edit its magazine, The Queen’s Work. He stayed there the rest of his life. In 1936 he took his final vows. The stages, and where each setback fell, are laid out in Seventeen years.

Listen The Queen’s Work About 1 minute

From novice to final vows

Seventeen years

A Jesuit’s training ran in long stages: novice, years of study, teaching, theology and ordination, and a last year of spiritual training, called tertianship, before final vows. Here are Father Ed’s, with the setbacks where they fell.

Each bar is as long as the stage. The dates are from Glenn C.’s 2015 draft biography and, for his final vows, AA’s newsletter (2006). Where Glenn C. hedges, so does the list. The sources on hand don’t date his tertianship.

  1. 1919–1921

    Novice

    St. Stanislaus Seminary, Florissant, Missouri

    Two years of prayer, work and the Spiritual Exercises, made in full, ending in his first vows.

    • About 1920: a crisis of faith that took him about two years to work through.

  2. 1921–1925

    Philosophy

    Saint Louis University

    Three years of philosophy, a bachelor’s degree in 1924 and a master’s in 1925.

    • Somewhere between about 1920 and 1928: the first pain in his leg, on a walk along the Missouri River.

  3. 1925–1926

    Not on record

    The sources on hand don’t say where he was.

  4. 1926–1929

    Teaching

    Loyola Academy, Chicago

    The middle stage, called regency: three years teaching at a Jesuit high school.

    • Friends in Chicago he kept all his life.

  5. 1929–1932

    Theology

    St. Mary’s College, Kansas

    Sent for four years of theology, in the advanced “long course.”

    • His second year: failed the Latin oral on whether angels have bodies.
    • June 25, 1931: ordained a priest in St. Louis.

  6. 1932–1936

    The Queen’s Work

    St. Louis

    Assigned to the Sodality’s central office, to help edit its magazine. He stayed until he died in 1960.

    • 1936: final vows, as a spiritual coadjutor.

Not the long course

He came out of it a priest with a cane and, among some of his fellow Jesuits, a name as “a disorganized, intellectual lightweight.” The job they gave him in 1932 was the one he kept for the next twenty-eight years.

For a closer look

Go deeper

The exam he failed and what it cost him, the magazine he joined, and how a man who couldn’t walk far got to work.

Angels’ bodies

In his second year of theology at St. Mary’s, Glenn C. writes, Father Ed failed the Latin oral examination on the thesis of whether angels have bodies, and with it the advanced “long course.” Both the rector and the provincial reprimanded him for spending too much time on a bulletin board of news items and not enough on his theology, and some of his fellow Jesuits wrote him off as “a disorganized, intellectual lightweight.”

In the Jesuits of his day, a priest who left the long course usually took his final vows as a spiritual coadjutor rather than as a professed father. AA’s newsletter says that is how Father Ed took his, in 1936.

Father Lord’s magazine

The Sodality of Our Lady was, Glenn C. writes, “considered a dying organization” when Father Daniel A. Lord, S.J., took it over in 1925. Lord’s magazine, The Queen’s Work, helped bring it to two million members and into nearly every Catholic school in the country. Father Ed joined its staff in 1932.

For more than twenty-five years he also taught at its Summer School of Catholic Action, which took him to some twenty-five cities in the United States and Canada. He spoke from newspaper clippings, and a colleague said his talks “bristled with one liners.”

Hitching a ride

The magazine’s office was at 3115 South Grand Boulevard, about two miles from the Jesuits’ house at Saint Louis University. Walking hurt, so, Glenn C. writes, Father Ed would blow a whistle and hitch a ride with any vehicle that stopped for him, a limousine and a garbage truck among them. Train steps and station platforms were hard, and few buildings had elevators, but he kept traveling.

The newsman in him never left. He was a member of the National Press Club and went as a delegate of the St. Louis Newspaper Guild to its conventions in Toronto and San Francisco.

Sources
  • 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 novitiate, his crisis of faith, the arthritis, his studies, Loyola Academy, the failed examination, his ordination) and chapter 2 (The Queen’s Work, Father Lord, the Summer School of Catholic Action, the whistle, the press). Quotations are from the online text.
  • “Father Ed Dowling — Bill W.’s Confidant and Friend.” Box 4-5-9, August–September 2006. The Sodality and The Queen’s Work, his final vows and his arthritis.
  • Glenn C., Heroes of Early Black AA: Their Stories and Their Messages. Hindsfoot Foundation, 2017. Chapter 1, on his years teaching in Chicago and his friends there.