The Beginnings of CORPUS & Youth

INVOLVEMENT OF YOUTH IN THE FOUNDATION OF CORPUS

The inspiration for putting down this account came to me in July, 2014, at the CORPUS Conference in Framingham, Massachusetts when Linda Pinto offered so captivatingly her presentation “The Way We Were and Are. . .” Linda’s account brought to my mind personal memories of the vignette that follows.

In a time when the membership in CORPUS is made up of mostly “gray-hairs,” the involvement of youth in the initial days of the organization may be a source of consolation, perhaps, even inspiration.

This story starts on a cold autumn night in Chicago in 1974. However, the longer story had started a couple of months earlier with a group gathered in a Rogers Park restaurant to discuss how to respond to the statement of Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Grady that priests who leave to marry are no longer interested in the Church. A number of action steps followed and culminated in the gathering described here.

The cold and wet of that autumn evening starkly contrasted with the warmth and dedication of those gathered in the upper floor apartment on the North Side. I was invited to this gathering by Frank Bonnike. Gathered in this upper apartment were present, along with Janet and Frank were Sue and Frank McGrath, Teddi and Bill Nemmers, Joan and Jim Wilber.

Frank Bonnike had begun his ecclesial career as a chaplain at the Illinois State Reformatory and went on to serve as the superintendent of a Catholic high school and a pastor. He was the first president of the Diocesan Presbytery in Rockford, Illinois and a founding executive board member of the National Federation of Priests' Councils, which he had followed Pat O’Malley elected in 1970 as the second president of the organization. Before his resignation from that post, he’d met with Rockford Bishop Arthur O’Neill to request being allowed to continue as a “reserved priest”—free to marry and still function within the Church structure. As you can imagine, he was told that was not possible.

I had been ordained for eleven years and for two years of those years was now serving as Co-director of Diocesan Hispanic Ministry. I knew Frank Bonnike as a brother priest of our diocese of Rockford during the time I’d served in four parishes since 1963. Earlier in 1974, I’d been in touch with him regarding the work he had done with the National Federation of Priest Councils, headquartered in Chicago. It was as he was about to finish his second term as President of the NFPC that Frank announced that he was resigning and would marry Janet Proteau. After his departure from the diocese and the NFPC, he had been allowed, even by Cardinal Cody, to serve in Pastoral Service at Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, I’d known Bill Nemmers and Frank McGrath from my years of Philosophy at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, when they were in those earlier years studying theology.

This autumn evening I was on my day off from diocesan work and had met for lunch with Kathy Potter, a student at Loyola, whom I knew from my two years at St. Monica, Carpentersville. Following the meal, I asked if she wanted to join me at this gathering. As a student, she was glad to know about what was going on regarding Church renewal.

As a result of the initial restaurant meeting, the group had met a number of times to finalize the plan of action in response to Bishop Grady’s statement. It was Janet who suggested the name of the group: CORPUS-Corps Of Reserved Priests United for Service. The intention of the group’s mailing was to elicit a response from at least 100 married priests who would be willing to “present themselves” for the service for which their wives and families cherished and celebrated them.

They had prepared their message and had it printed. They had addressed the envelopes, had them stuffed with the introduction of who the group was and why they were sending this statement to the recipient. There on the dining room table just outside the circle of the gathering sat the envelopes in boxes, all ready to be taken to the post office for mailing. Only one more decision to make.

In previous meetings, the group had already determined the need and indicated a number of a post office box to receive responses to the statement. Now they needed to address the question, “Whose address and signature will go on the application form for the P.O. box?” None of the organizers in the group—especially those who’d served in the Archdiocese of Chicago—wanted anyone to become a target for the all-seeing eye of Cardinal Cody with the possibility of a threat of retaliation. They recognized that, to be successful, the survey had to go out without anyone coming under attack from the “downtown” ecclesiastical officialdom.

After wrestling with this question for a while, the group was surprised to hear Kathy pipe up saying, “You could use my address. No one would know who I am.” And that settled the matter. Kathy wrote down her address on the P.O box application, and as Frank McGrath told me recently, they used Kathy’s name and Carpentersville address on the initial P.O. box application—assuring total undetectability by the officialdom of “downtown”— and Kathy’s generous offer, unbeknownst to her, was an early sign of the involvement of young people in Church reform at the outset of CORPUS.

Epilogue: Kathy lives in Chicago with her husband, Larry. I was honored to have been asked by her to co-preside at her wedding in 1979.