“Today’s event … marks a kind of homecoming for Dion—both to his neighborhood and to his borough, but also to Fordham,” said Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, which hosted the event. “We are fortunate, indeed, to have this extraordinary American Catholic artist and troubadour here with us.” 

DiMucci rose to fame as the lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts in the 1950s, charting with the hit song “Teenager in Love.” He released more than 40 albums, scored 11 Top 10 hits on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also nominated for two Grammys and described as a formative influence by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan. 

DiMucci is no stranger to Fordham. He was born on campus—at what used to be the Fordham Hospital—and spent the first two decades of his life just a few blocks away from Rose Hill. In 2013, the University awarded him an honorary degree. 

Speaking to more than 400 people in Keating First Auditorium, DiMucci recalled growing up in the Belmont section of the Bronx, singing on street corners with his friends, falling in love with his wife, playing with the greatest musicians of his era, conquering addiction, and his relationship with the Catholic faith. And of course, he performed some of his famous songs, including “Abraham, Martin, and John.” 

“He was the most powerful individual performer I have heard at Fordham during my 50-plus years at the school,” said Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of history and African and African American studies. “And his stories of his childhood in the Belmont neighborhood … reminded us that genius can thrive in the most improbable circumstances and uplift all of us with a message of hope and transcendence.”

“Nearly 20-some years ago, Mark had a vision, a plan—some might say a determination—to establish the center at Fordham,” said Connie Curran, who, with her late husband, John Curran, Ph.D., PHA ’66, has been the center’s chief benefactor. “Father Massa set out to put Fordham on the map as a center for Catholic studies, and that is exactly what has happened. …You can’t help but to be proud of the work that has been achieved.”

Curran said that Father Massa laid the groundwork for his successors to make the center one of the nation’s premier centers on Catholic studies that it is today.

To honor his efforts, the University will host Music, Mingling, and Magis with Father Massa on June 2. Proceeds from the benefit will go toward the Mark S. Massa, S.J., Curran Center Magis Fund. And Father Massa will be there, ready to mingle.

For tickets to the event, which includes a cocktail reception at 6:30 p.m., register by Thursday, May 19.

Father Massa joined the Fordham University faculty in 1987. He received a distinguished teaching award from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1994 and, seven years later, established The Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at the University. He served as its director until 2010. He was also the first holder of Fordham’s Karl Rahner Chair in Theology.

The center remained a small program with big ambitions—Father Massa once called it “a phone
and a desk on the third floor of Keating Hall”—until the Currans stepped in with an endowment.

Today the center presents programs on arts, culture, and ideas throughout the academic year. Its most recent program examined Billie Holiday’s Catholic background in a lecture and live performance. The center is also an internationally recognized base for Flannery O’Connor studies. Other recent events have focused on liberation and womanist theologies, Irish poetry, Joe Biden’s Catholicism, and Puerto Rican migration.

Father Massa left Fordham in 2010 to become dean of the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, where he is now director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. His influence continues to be felt at the center where he is regarded as a guiding spirit.

“Holiday’s Catholic training really went to her artistry, to her sound, to her sense of self,” said Tracy Fessenden, Ph.D., author of Religion Around Billie Holiday (Penn State University Press, 2018) and a religious studies professor at Arizona State University. “For all of the ink that has been spilled about Holiday and all of the movies that we have yet to see, we just don’t see much attention paid to her Catholicism.” 

In a lecture at the Rose Hill campus on March 29, Fessenden discussed how the singer’s Catholic childhood impacted her life and music. Fessenden’s speech was paired with performances from students in the Fordham Jazz Quintet, who sang and played songs by Holiday. Their dual presentation was co-sponsored by the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and the Department of Music. 

Fessenden said that Holiday grew up in Baltimore, a port city with a strong Catholic presence dating back to the 18th century. She received her only formal vocal instruction at the Baltimore House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, the Catholic convent where she was sent to live as a child. 

Holiday attended Mass and sang to liturgical music every day. There are hints of her Catholic upbringing in her songs, particularly in her diction, idiosyncratic stresses, and phrasing, said Fessenden She noted that Holiday’s song “God Bless The Child,” is a swing spiritual with Catholic roots that has been performed by gospel choirs across the world. Holiday also received the sacraments, prayed the rosary, and maintained a lifelong friendship with well-known priest and jazz musician Norman O’Connor, she said. 

During her presentation, Fessenden paused periodically for student performances of six Billie Holiday songs: “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Lady Sings The Blues,” “God Bless The Child,” “My Man,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Fine and Mellow.” 

Music has the power to bring people together, especially during the pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine, said Fessenden. 

“It serves as a testament to life’s ongoingness, even in ravaged places,” she said. “That use of music is very much in the spirit of Holiday.” 

The event, “Faithful Service: Reflections on Religion in Public Life,” was hosted by the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies in conjunction with Fordham professor Michael Peppard’s Religion and American Politics course, whose students were in attendance, along with other guests. In the hour-long session, Vargas reflected on his eclectic life, the ways his faith shaped his political career, and the role of religion at the U.S. Capitol. 

Vargas was raised on a chicken ranch in California with his nine siblings. As a young adult, he entered the Jesuits and worked with disadvantaged communities, including orphaned children and displaced people in El Salvador. He spent two years with the Jesuits at Fordham—where he earned a master’s degree in humanities in 1987—and said they instilled in his worldview the importance of making the world a better place. 

“I have always been someone with deep faith in Christ. But this gave me a way of looking at the world and trying to address it in a way that makes sense to me,” Vargas said. 

Vargas went on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1991, along with his famous classmate, President Barack Obama. He left the Jesuits and married Adrienne D’Ascoli, a fellow Fordham graduate. He began his career in politics at the San Diego City Council in 1993, where he worked in planning, funding, and advocating for public safety, municipal infrastructure, and schools. He’s now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 51st district of San Diego, where he has served since 2013.  

Though Vargas is no longer a Jesuit, he remains a devout Catholic. A person’s religion can deeply inform their values, including his own passion for immigration reform in the U.S. His faith has also led to interesting interactions among his colleagues. When he joined a state assembly prayer group, he was the sole liberal Catholic in a group of right-wing Protestants. They disagreed on many issues, but they became friends, he said. 

Peppard, a theology professor at Fordham, pointed out that the U.S. has seen a dramatic rise of people without religious affiliation. Vargas agreed and noted that many of his colleagues avoid mixing religion with politics because they are afraid of damaging their relationship with non-affiliated voters. He also recalled an evening dinner with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, where another guest asked the Dalai Lama about his perspective on religion. 

“He says, ‘Well, I think people should be atheist. … There’s just too many wars, too many fights started over religion; it’d be better if people were atheist’ … [Among the non-affiliated, there is] that notion that religion does start a lot of problems, that religion creates the problem, not solutions. I understand that. There’s something to that.”

Thomas Reuter, a political science and theology double major at Fordham College at Rose Hill, asked Vargas, “How do you remedy any contradictions between your legal and political opinions and the institutional stances of the Catholic Church?” In response, Vargas said he tries to strike a balance by following the Constitution. 

“I take an oath to defend the Constitution, and I really do try to do that. There are some instances, I think, where the Constitution doesn’t live up to what it should be … But those are the rules that we live under,” Vargas said.  

Thomas Massaro, S.J., a professor of theology who knew Vargas when they were Jesuits together at Fordham, also asked Vargas—a longtime politician who has traveled across the country—to reflect on the differences in political culture between the West Coast and East Coast. 

“Not a lot of things surprise me. I’ve been around in politics for a long time … Even though I’m a liberal Democrat, I’ve hung around a lot of Republicans who are pretty darn conservative, certainly in California. But when I got to the Congress, the one thing that I did not understand, didn’t really have a feel for, is how racist the South was and is,” Vargas said. He recalled a Southern party where he heard someone use the n-word. At first, he didn’t say anything. But when he heard the word a second time, he spoke up. 

“They said, ‘Well, you don’t understand. You’re from the West,’” Vargas said. “No, I understand, big time. It’s wrong.” 

But his final anecdote wasn’t meant to be discouraging. Vargas said there are several other Rams in Congress, who are all proud of their heritage from Fordham—a place that prepared them for the real world. 

“I hope the world turns out to be the greatest for you guys,” Vargas said to the students over Zoom. “It really is a wonderful place out there.”

“[A] man from Montana said, ‘How do you tell anyone that you’ve been sodomized over 300 times?’” Lajimodiere said, recalling an interview from her research. “That’s the issue with boarding school stories. How do you tell [them]? … They keep it inside. And we know that you’re only as healthy as your secrets.” 

The event, co-sponsored by the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and Fordham’s theology department, is part of the Taking Responsibility initiative, a grant-sponsored project that confronts the causes and legacy of clergy sexual abuse. This spring semester, the initiative is hosting a webinar series that examines how the crisis has affected historically marginalized communities in the U.S., including indigenous peoples.  

“Historically, hearing Native voices is not something that the Catholic Church has excelled at,” said webinar moderator Jack Downey, Ph.D., an associate professor of Catholic studies at the University of Rochester and a 2012 graduate of Fordham’s doctoral theology program. “[But] it’s core to the history of Catholicism on these lands.” 

From 1860 to 1978, the federal government forced indigenous children to attend boarding schools—many of which were managed by Catholic priests and nuns—where some children fell prey to clergy sexual abuse and “cultural genocide,” said Lajimodiere. But the church hasn’t paid enough attention to the issue because it’s “not a white Catholic problem,” said Kathleen Holscher, Ph.D., an associate professor of American studies and religious studies at the University of New Mexico. 

“We should be sitting here, having a crisis about our legacy of boarding schools in this country, in the same way that we’re sitting here having a crisis about Catholic sexual abuse, but we’re not,” said Holscher, who studies the records of abusive priests. “White Catholics don’t see it as their problem in the same way.”  

Interviewing the ‘Stolen Generation’

Boarding school survivors experienced loss of identity and culture; corporeal punishment and forced child labor, hunger, sexual and mental abuse—and the unresolved grief, mental health issues, relationship issues, and alcohol abuse that followed, as detailed in the 1928 Meriam Report, said Lajimodiere. 

Among the victims of the “stolen generation” were her own parents and grandfathers, Lajimodiere said. Their experiences inspired her to spend more than a decade researching their trauma and interviewing other boarding school survivors in the Midwest, resulting in her book, “Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding Schools” (North Dakota State University Press, 2019). Her research uncovered a vast history of sexual abuse.

‘They Took Advantage of That Brokenness’

Lajimodiere read aloud the stories of several survivors in her book, including a woman who was 6 years old when she was sexually abused by a priest and a man who couldn’t pray with his tribe without remembering the boarding school staff who forced him to kneel on a broomstick every time he spoke in his native tongue. 

The boarding school priests and nuns had secrets, too. Holscher shared the story of one Jesuit priest, Bernard Fagan, a boarding school director who admitted to sexually exploiting about 20 indigeneous girls, starting in the late 1970s. 

“Fagan’s story reveals how clerical abusers took advantage of the damage that settler colonialism and their own missions as institutions that were part of that colonialism had already rendered on Native communities,” Holscher said, adding that much of the abuse against indigenous children has been unreported and underreported. “They took advantage of that brokenness.”

In September 2020, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Deb Haaland introduced a bill that would establish the first formal commission in U.S. history to investigate and acknowledge the federal government’s injustices toward indigenous boarding school survivors and their families.

“We need more research on boarding schools and scholarship focused on family programs,” said Lajimodiere, who co-founded the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. “We have not even begun the truth telling—even gotten close to reconciliation here in the United States.”

The full recording of the event, “Native American Communites and the Clerical Sexual Abuse Crisis,” is below: 

The Taking Responsibility initiative, which began last summer, hopes to help Jesuit schools, colleges, and universities become safer and more transparent institutions. 

Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City

Originally published in 2016, this memoir by Bronx-born writer, educator, and activist Pamela Lewis, FCRH ’03, has been getting renewed attention amid the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a deeply personal account of her experiences teaching in one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country. Lewis details her frustrations working within a system she feels does not value her own understanding, as a Black woman, of what children of color need to succeed. She writes about the effects of “double consciousness” on her and her students, using the term, coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, that refers to the challenge African Americans face when forced to view themselves through the eyes of those around them. Ultimately, Lewis challenges educators to acknowledge the role race plays in their classrooms and, above all, “to not be color blind.” —Nicole LaRosa

Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor

As a fiction writer whose Catholic faith was a driving force in her work, Flannery O’Connor created “powerful anti racist parables,” writes Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. And yet, in her personal correspondence, she expressed “attitudes that are hard to describe as anything but patently racist.” In Radical Ambivalence, O’Donnell sets out to explore these contradictions “rather than try to deny, defend, or resolve” them. She helps readers see portrayals of race in O’Connor’s fiction from contemporary, historical, political, and theological perspectives. Although the opportunity for O’Connor’s thinking on race to evolve was cut short—she died from lupus at age 39, just one month after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—O’Donnell ultimately hopes to “focus attention where O’Connor clearly wanted it to be, as evidenced in many of her stories: on the ways in which racism and a racist caste system shape (and misshape) white people, its inventors and perpetrators.” —Ryan Stellabotte

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side

Jim Mackin, FCLC ’76, is a retired financial executive turned New York City historian. As the founder of WeekdayWalks, he often guides people on strolls through offbeat areas of the city. In this richly detailed, photo-filled book, he focuses on his own neighborhood, writing about nearly 600 notable former residents of the Upper West Side. He highlights the famous (Humphrey Bogart, Barack Obama, and others), but he also celebrates the uncommon lives of scientists, explorers, journalists, and judges whose stories should be better known. He calls attention to women whose feats have been unsung, such as pilot Elinor Smith and nuclear physicist Harriet Brooks, and writes about the “Old Community,” a tight-knit African American enclave that counted Marcus Garvey and Billie Holiday among its residents. —Ryan Stellabotte

“We’re in the midst of a global pandemic, one that’s combined with broad and outspoken activism in the area of racial justice,” said J. Patrick Hornbeck, Ph.D., chair of the Fordham theology department. “Both of these, and in particular, the intersection of them, have highlighted long-standing and systemic forms of inequality and inequity. Catholic colleges and universities, like all colleges and universities, are considering their plans for reopening right at the intersection of these twin crises.”

Hornbeck served as moderator for “Reopening Justly or Just Reopening? Catholic Social Teaching, Universities, and COVID-19,” a panel discussion organized by Fordham’s Department of Theology and the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies The Zoom event focused on issues related to reopening, such as balancing the desire to open campuses with the need to keep people safe, the implications of students’ physical and mental health, and how the most vulnerable are affected by these decisions.

These questions are all interconnected, said Christine Firer Hinze, professor of theology and outgoing director of the Curran Center at Fordham, and can be addressed through the lens of Catholic social teaching, which focuses on matters of human dignity and common good in society. Catholic social teaching can serve as a “set of navigational markers” to help those who are making these decisions, she said.

“Decision-making around COVID … should be reality-based …and at the same time value-oriented,” she said. “We should respect the dignity and enhance the well-being of all our different stakeholders. We know this is not easy …. We are all interdependent. COVID has brought that home ridiculously clearly.”

Hornbeck said that all of these questions surrounding reopening require “ethical triage” because every option seems to “bring a potential for harm to someone in some way.”

Oftentimes, those who are the most affected by these decisions are the most vulnerable, said Craig Ford, assistant professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert’s College.

“The question now for me is who is being placed in vulnerable positions, and I think that’s something we really have to keep in mind,” he said. “We’re all vulnerable because of COVID-19, but what practices are we doing as an institution when we are asking people to be placed into vulnerable positions?”

Ford cited as an example the difference between faculty members who may have the option of teaching fully or partially online compared to staff members who work and live in residence halls. On the other hand, Ford also wondered about what could happen to students, particularly students of color and LGBTQ students, if they are sent back home.

“[What] if we pull people into our institution and are forced to send them home within four to five weeks because we have outbreaks—how are they going to continue to learn, how are they vulnerable again?” he asked. “Also our LGBTQ folks, where coming to campus might be good for them in some way but going home might be dangerous again, how do we take responsibility as an institution recognizing all these variables in people’s lives?”

Kate Ward, assistant professor of theology at Marquette University, said that it often feels like we’re in a situation where there “seems to be no good choices.” She highlighted the fact that if universities do fully reopen, there’s a chance people get sick, but fully staying closed could have unintended consequences.

“If we don’t open campus, some students will be home in less-than-safe situations. Some may come to harm there, others may not finish their degree, and other harms may occur—instability to our institutions, job loss of vulnerable workers,” she said.

Gerald Beyer, associate professor of Christian ethics at Villanova University, argued that at the very least, if universities do reopen, they have to do as much as possible to protect those who are most vulnerable by providing proper PPE and other safety measures.

Beyer also called on colleges to make sure they have the resources ready to help students in whatever form that takes, including making counseling resources available online and having campus ministers available to address students’ needs.

“Mental health, and I would add spiritual health, on Catholic campuses is crucial, these are crucial issues,” he said.

Both Ford and Ward called on Catholic universities and their staff and faculty members to think “more creatively” about online learning and how they can serve their communities during this time.

“What does it mean to generate content all the time? What does it mean to rethink a lot of what students want?” he asked.

Ford said in his classes, he’s used the online forum to have guest speakers come in to talk about their jobs and how they implement principles of social justice in their work.

“Teaching online is not like teaching face to face, but that means there are new opportunities,” he said.

“Some people think [hip-hop and God] are completely disconnected. But when we actually come to look at both, we try to see God in all things, and this is one way of doing that,” Martínez, FCRH ’13, said in an interview before the main event.

On Oct. 25, Martínez returned to his alma mater to share how he blends hip-hop with Ignatian spirituality. 

Under Flom Auditorium’s stage lights, he performed several original songs and spoke to alumni, faculty, staff, and students at Fordham’s Ignatian Week event “Prophetic Fire: The Power of Hip-Hop, Media, and Faith,” sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.  

“One of the main missions that you have as a Jesuit scholastic and as a Jesuit, period, is to set hearts on fire. Set hearts on fire with love …  for something greater than yourself,” Martínez said. “For me, music is one powerful way [of doing that]. It’s a universal language that speaks and crosses borders, cultures, and even language. It connects with people.” 

Martínez, a Cuban American from Miami, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill with degrees in philosophy and psychology in 2013. Later that year, he joined the Society of Jesus in the Antilles Province (Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Miami). He currently serves as a theology teacher and campus minister at his high school alma mater, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, in Miami. 

For more information about Martínez, visit his website: http://www.mikemartinezsj.com. 

“What Happened? Why? What Now? Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church” brought together experts in law, psychology, and theology to talk about new developments in the ongoing crisis, such the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s August report detailing how more than 300 Catholic priests there sexually abused children over seven decades and were protected by a hierarchy of church leaders.

It was the first in what organizers said will be a series of events dedicated to the crisis, and was preceded by a full minute of silence in honor of the victims.

The End of Piecemeal Reforms

Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D., professor of theological and social ethics and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham, called the Pennsylvania revelations, as well as those relating to the abuse and cover up involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, “sexual abuse crisis 3.0.”

The first highly publicized incident of abuse, involving a Louisiana priest who was convicted of pedophilia in 1985, was dismissed as an aberration, Massingale said. Then in 2002, the Boston Globe published a report showing the abuse was more widespread, but it was still seen as an American phenomenon confined to wayward priests.

Now, he said, victims are coming forward from around the globe, which is proof that the whole church hierarchy is to blame. The entire process of priest formation needs to be reformed, he said, with less emphasis on the virtue of obedience.

“What we’re seeing is an interrogation of a monarchical system of power, where the people who have power in the church are not accountable to anyone except the person above them, and there are no women in the chain of command, and no lay people in the chain of command,” he said, noting that few outside the church believe church leaders are capable of policing themselves.

“We have reached the end of piecemeal reforms.”

M. Cathleen Kaveny, Ph.D., the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College, concurred, and said it’s important that the church submit itself to appropriate legal procedures and use secular best practices to make sure the abuse never happens again.

“At the same time, its extremely essential that we use and develop our own theological and ethical language to understand why this is a problem, not just for citizens in the secular society who are harming one other, but also for fellow members of the body of Christ, to see how that is harming us as church,” she said.

Time to Rethink Priest Formation

The relationship between priests and bishops was a major point of discussion. Father Massingale noted that at its best, the relationship takes on a benevolent father-son dynamic. At its worst, a priest can become psychologically dependent on the bishop, thus becoming vulnerable to being used to cover up for him or for others.

Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D., the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, professor of psychology, and director of Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education, echoed Father Massingale’s strenuous assertion that homosexuality is not in any way connected to the abuse perpetrated by priests.

Men who molest young boys are immature heterosexuals who find themselves identifying more as a child than as an adult, she said. She noted that national studies have found that priests who have abused children do not display evidence of mental illness or urges associated with pedophilia.

And covering up the abuse, Fisher said, has only compounded and spread the pain further.

“People who are deeply religious are more likely to believe in the power of forgiveness, however the severity of harm perpetuated on children, the violation of the clerics’ position of trust and moral authority, repetition of abuse by individual clerics, and the past unwillingness of the church to recognize these problems is making forgiveness difficult for many Catholics,” she said.

Why Now?

To the question of why, David Gibson, director of Fordham’s Center of Religion and Culture, added, “Why now?” For starters, he noted that in 2002, American bishops went after the “low-lying fruit,” by focusing on priests and exempting themselves from scrutiny.

“I remember talking to a bishop I’ve known pretty for a pretty long time. I said, ‘What about you guys?’ And he said to me, ‘I don’t even know how you fire a bishop,’” he said.

Gibson said that the Pennsylvania grand jury report added narratives to what had previously been dry statistics, and their impact was heightened by the revelations of Cardinal McCarrick’s conduct that had come out just a month before. Just as important, Gibson noted, is that conservative Catholics have come out in favor of investigations they’d previously resisted, and law enforcement officials are no longer turning a blind eye.

Finally, he said, it’s become apparent that the problem is not confined to Anglophile countries such as the United States, Ireland and Australia.

“It turns out we were the leading edge of a wave of that’s now breaking around the world, in places like Chili, Guam, Mexico, Poland, and Italy,” he said.

“This is all emboldening victims, empowering them, and more of them are speaking out. And when victims speak out, that’s more effective than any media investigation or grand jury report.”

The panel was co-sponsored by Fordham’s Department of Theology, Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, and Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work.

The documentary, which tells the story of O’Connor through the eyes of contemporary writers and artists such as Tommy Lee Jones, Alice Walker, and Alice McDermott, is a mix of interviews, animation, and never-before-shown archival footage of O’Connor, whose life was cut short by illness in 1964, when she was 39.

The screening was followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry at Georgetown University, and Elizabeth Coffman, Ph.D. associate professor of communication at Loyola University of Chicago. The discussion was moderated by James Martin, S.J., editor at large of America Magazine, which co-sponsored the event, and attended by members of O’Connor’s family, including her cousin Francis Florencourt, Catherine and Randy Man, and Robert and Susan Mann.

A Rich Internal Life

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, the primary sponsor of the event, said that although O’Connor was forced to spend a great deal of time at her family’s farm in rural Georgia after she was diagnosed with lupus, her rich internal life provided more than enough grist for the film. O’Donnell, an O’Connor scholar who appears in the film, told the audience that the Flannery O’Connor Trust has bequeathed a grant of $450,000 to the Curran Center for use in programming related to the renowned author.

“Flannery O’Connor was doubtful her story would be worth writing a book about. She would likely be astonished to learn that not only was her life interesting enough to be the subject of multiple biographies, but was also exciting enough to make a movie about,” she said.

In their discussion, the filmmakers touched on topics as varied as the logistical challenges of making a film about a writer who appears in few pictures and even fewer films, the darkness of her writing, and her complicated relationship to the civil rights movement.

A Hidden Pain

Father Bosco said O’Connor’s reputation for a bleak outlook is easier to understand when one takes a fuller look at her life. Despite the fact that her father died of lupus when she was 15, when she herself began showing symptoms while living just outside New York City, her diagnosis was hidden from her for several years. Stints at the University of Iowa’s prestigious writing workshop and the Yaddo artist community in Saratoga Springs illustrated her enormous potential to be a larger part of the literary community at the time, but the disease forced her to retreat to her family’s farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.

“From the outside, she just looks difficult and hard, but once you get the key, it opens the door to all her stories, and you can just go deeper and deeper and deeper into them. And I think that that’s what we were trying to do with telling her life,” said Father Bosco, whose scholarship focuses much of his work on the intersection of theology and art in the British and American Catholic literary tradition.

“I teach Flannery O’Connor all the time, and when I tell them she was this Catholic woman who went to Mass every single day, they’re really surprised.”

Coffman, a film scholar and active documentary filmmaker, said it was also important to remember that she was diagnosed when she was 25, but lived another 14 years.

“Seeing how much work she created between then—you know, she really wrote with a death sentence over her head. She was so stoic about her illness, and rarely spoke about it, but she lived with it, and you see it coming out in her fiction,” she said.

Complicated Relation to Civil Rights

The panelists also addressed the fact that O’Connor chose to largely sit out the civil rights protests that were raging across Georgia at the time. Father Martin noted that O’Connor, when informed that Dorothy Day had arrived to support Koinonia, an integrated Christian community of farmers living in Americus, Georgia, responded, “All my thoughts on this subject are ugly and uncharitable—such as: that’s a mighty long way to come to get shot at, etc.”

O’Connor also chose not to meet James Baldwin when he came to Georgia, because she feared it would create a scandal and alter her public identity, and thus make it more difficult for her to observe and write about Southern culture.

“It’s not about covering up anything, nor is it ignoring what she was born into and the culture she lived in. I know that culture. I grew up in it too,” Coffman said.

“She was starting to confront it in her fiction. I may have started the research process with some questions about the potential racism, but I ended up feeling that with [stories such as]  Revelation, she worked through it.”

Bosco agreed, noting that O’Connor saw civil rights as a slow evolution and was very put off by Northerners coming down and telling Southerners how to solve their social problems.

“We have feminists who both love and hate Flannery O’Connor. You have people in race theory who love Flannery O’Connor and hate Flannery O’Connor, and write about her,” he said.

“Hers is a confident, yet compassionate voice that speaks from an unabashedly feminine perspective,” she said.

An accomplished teacher and scholar, Ponsot has translated 40 books from French into English, written radio and TV scripts, and taught students at Queens College, The New School, Columbia University, the 92^nd Street Y, Poets House, and other venues.

As a young woman, O’Donnell said, the native New Yorker moved to Paris after earning a master’s degree from Columbia. On the boat voyage over, she met poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti—a meeting which led to the publication of her first book, True Minds, as part of his City Lights series, in the 1950s.

Ponsot did not seek to publish her second book, Admit Impediment, for some 24 years as she raised seven children, said O’Donnell. Remarking on this unpublished period of her life, Ponsot wrote: “You don’t wait for someone to approve. If you go on doing it and enjoying it, well what have you done? You’ve spent time enjoying what your language makes of you. Very often this makes for a more comfortable self than any other you’ll ever meet.”

Speaking softly to a large audience gathered in the Corrigan Conference center, Ponsot exclaimed “it’s exciting” to receive the award and to be given an opportunity to read portions of her poetry. She was subsequently presented with a plaque and a collage of her published book covers, to which she threw up her arms delightedly.

The recipient of several poetry awards, Ponsot has also published two books on the pedagogy of writing, and, in 2010, was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

The event was co-sponsored by the Mezzo Cammin Women poets Timeline.