• Home
  • About
  • BIO
  • Conferences
  • Contact
  • Follow Gerard on FB & Twitter
  • Speaking

Coming Home

Dr. Gerard M. Nadal: Science in Service of the Pro-Life Movement

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Live Action Strikes Again: Planned Parenthood Does Not Do Mammograms As Claimed
Senator Boxer Insists That Planned Parenthood Does Mammograms »

Father Jack McGuire and Geraldine Ferraro: A Tale of Two Funerals

April 1, 2011 by Gerard M. Nadal

Father John McGuire

Yesterday saw two notable funerals in the Archdiocese of New York. Geraldine Ferraro, the first vice-presidential candidate in U.S. history was buried from Manhattan’s Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer, the Church where Regina and I were married eighteen years ago. Awe-inspiring beauty doesn’t even begin to describe this church. It is without parallel. Filling the pews were politicians of every stripe, including the Clintons and Walter Mondale.

There were eulogies as soaring as the giant vaulted ceiling of the Gothic church, and the stained glass windows whose height seem to defy gravity. Ferraro was a giant in her day, and stood for the equal treatment of women in a time when women truly were second class citizens in many quarters of society. Here at Coming Home, Ferraro’s quest for equal rights is not in question. It is laudable.

How one gets there matters, and that is where our paths diverge.

Ferraro broke with the Church and advocated advancing women on the ever-growing pile of babies’ corpses. In advancing the rights of women on such a blood-soaked platform, Ferraro and her peers chose the innocent on which to vent their righteous rage. In so doing, they surrendered the moral high ground and made of themselves victimizers whose atrocities made their male tormenters’ pale in comparison.

What might our nation look like today if Ferraro had stood at the Democratic Convention and proclaimed that women could get to the promised land without making war on their babies, their bodies, or men? In truth, candidate Ferraro and her message were not the fulfillment of the founders of women’s suffrage, but a repudiation of their values concerning children and family. Ferraro was a grotesque implosion, and the resulting Reagan landslide, the biggest in history, buried her. American women spoke, and proclaimed that Ferraro did not represent them.

So, yesterday Ferraro was lionized by the lions who, like her, are committed to eating our young.

At the same hour, one hundred miles to the North, I sat in the tiny Church of Saint Colman in the sleepy hamlet of East Kingston, New York, as Archbishop Dolan presided over the funeral mass of Father John McGuire. Father McGuire was none of the things that Ferraro was, and was everything she was not.

He wasn’t famous. He wasn’t a household name all over the nation. He was a quiet, humble priest.

Jack began his life of service to the Church as a boy in the early 1940’s when he joined the LaSalle Christian Brothers. He professed final vows in 1949. Jack would go on to earn several master degrees, including one in social work, and he would spend years working in a boy’s reformatory as the head of a cottage, as well as the admissions director.

Jack felt the call to priesthood and left the brothers in the mid-70’s and entered seminary, being ordained for the Archdiocese of New York on November 3, 1979. I didn’t know Jack then, but was in attendance at his ordination to see one of his classmates who was a deacon in my parish.

I met jack in 1981 through Father Luke McCann, another brother in Jack’s community who left and was ordained with Jack. At the time, Jack was struggling with alcohol, went to recovery, and spent the rest of his life helping others with addictive disorders. He became pastor of Saint Colman’s parish and would remain there for the rest of his active ministry.

When I struggled with leaving the seminary and pursuing science, Jack told me to “get the hell out of there and become a doctor. The Church needs your voice in science and medicine, Gerry.”

I never looked back.

Jack busied himself with all of the pastoral duties of a small town church. There was a community of developmentally disabled adults in the area, and when any one of them died, he waked them in the church. He was missing on the altar at Saint Vincent Ferrer on my wedding day, so he could preside at the funeral of a saint with Down Syndrome.

If nothing I am saying about Father Jack seems remarkable, that’s what was so very special about him. He was a priest’s priest. He loved the people, and saw them as far holier than he ever hoped to be. He was an ardent supporter of the pro-life movement and worked tirelessly for the disenfranchised. He spent the last two years of his life living back among the brothers in their nursing home, anointing the dying, hearing confessions and saying daily mass. Jack had come home to live with the boys of his youth.

So yesterday his archbishop and about twenty priests joined the people of the simple little (very little) country church to bid farewell to the man who knew the depths of human despair from his own alcoholism and lifted the weary with his own huge heart and the assurance of God’s love and mercy. We laughed and wept simultaneously at the remembrances of this Irish rogue with a quick smile and a kind word for everyone.

Jack saw the beauty of simplicity, and the strength contained within human frailty and imperfection. He saw through the eyes of faith, through the eyes of his Divine Master what Ferraro could not, did not, and never did see. Jack’s response to injustice was not blame, or death, or anger such as the wicked fury of modern feminism. Jack’s response was love, and prayer, and identifying the real target for change. As Jack always reminded me,

“You need to pray for them, Gerry. You won’t change anything without prayer.”

Nobody knew that better than Jack. He was a great friend and mentor through the years. Yesterday in the small church that he filled with his love we said goodbye to a humble giant, a saint as sure as there has ever been one.

Share this:

  • Share
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Bishops | 5 Comments

5 Responses

  1. on April 1, 2011 at 2:39 PM Lisa Mladinich

    Well said, Gerry. Too often these supposed icons of “progress” are confused at best, at worst horrors; while the icon-makers of the media ignore those who do what is genuinely beautiful but not fashionable or glamorous; those who smile as they suffer, serve and sacrifice — because they know what it is to love.


  2. on April 1, 2011 at 4:07 PM Deecy

    This is a beautiful reflection, and I am grateful for having read it, though I did not personally know either of the people mentioned. So often we miss the holiness of the simple, ordinary, very human experience and instead get trapped in glorification of the sensational, the sophisticated, and the power-based response. If we truly listen to Christ’s message, we clearly see that evil is conquored by good, by love, and by prayer.


  3. on April 1, 2011 at 5:46 PM Just Another Priest

    Thank you for this beautiful gift at the end of a hard week. You gave me the gift of feeling pity for Ms. Ferraro, and praying for her from the heart, rather than out of duty. Rather than excoriating her, you simply showed what holiness looked like in the life of your dear friend. I pray for him at Vespers tonight, and that the dear Lord will ease your grief. How I pray that others will have seen and heard Christ in me when it comes time for me to go home to God. Please ask Jesus and Mary to help me be a good priest. Again, thank you for this meditation.

    Fr. Frank


  4. on April 1, 2011 at 10:01 PM Gerard M. Nadal

    Fr. Frank,

    Jack would always say how good and holy the people are. I think that’s the essence of a good priest right there. He genuinely loved the people and prayed for them when he wasn’t busy ministering to them.

    He also had no political aspirations within the clergy and was obedient to the Magisterium. I’ll keep you in my prayers this weekend. Thank you for your generous response to God’s call.

    God Bless


  5. on April 4, 2011 at 11:55 AM ari

    thank you for a lovely and holy tribute to your friend and acquaintance. we are blessed to know him through you, to have a model of what holiness in life looks like. it is like a painting in words, that we may be inspired to try and emulate with the crayons of our own characters.



Comments are closed.

  • Archives

    • June 2022 (1)
    • May 2022 (1)
    • July 2021 (1)
    • January 2021 (7)
    • November 2020 (1)
    • May 2020 (2)
    • September 2019 (1)
    • May 2019 (2)
    • April 2019 (1)
    • February 2019 (1)
    • April 2018 (2)
    • January 2017 (1)
    • December 2016 (1)
    • November 2016 (1)
    • October 2016 (10)
    • July 2016 (2)
    • June 2016 (1)
    • May 2016 (1)
    • April 2016 (1)
    • March 2016 (1)
    • February 2016 (3)
    • December 2015 (1)
    • November 2015 (2)
    • October 2015 (1)
    • September 2015 (1)
    • August 2015 (3)
    • April 2015 (1)
    • February 2015 (1)
    • December 2014 (3)
    • November 2014 (1)
    • October 2014 (4)
    • September 2014 (15)
    • August 2014 (6)
    • June 2014 (5)
    • May 2014 (1)
    • April 2014 (2)
    • March 2014 (2)
    • February 2014 (1)
    • January 2014 (3)
    • December 2013 (17)
    • November 2013 (9)
    • October 2013 (12)
    • September 2013 (4)
    • July 2013 (2)
    • June 2013 (5)
    • May 2013 (2)
    • April 2013 (3)
    • March 2013 (6)
    • February 2013 (2)
    • January 2013 (1)
    • December 2012 (18)
    • November 2012 (6)
    • October 2012 (13)
    • September 2012 (1)
    • July 2012 (10)
    • June 2012 (13)
    • May 2012 (8)
    • April 2012 (1)
    • March 2012 (11)
    • February 2012 (21)
    • January 2012 (5)
    • December 2011 (18)
    • November 2011 (3)
    • October 2011 (23)
    • September 2011 (24)
    • August 2011 (22)
    • July 2011 (22)
    • June 2011 (29)
    • May 2011 (8)
    • April 2011 (11)
    • March 2011 (18)
    • February 2011 (42)
    • January 2011 (26)
    • December 2010 (30)
    • November 2010 (34)
    • October 2010 (33)
    • September 2010 (16)
    • August 2010 (15)
    • July 2010 (7)
    • June 2010 (21)
    • May 2010 (33)
    • April 2010 (14)
    • March 2010 (41)
    • February 2010 (36)
    • January 2010 (59)
    • December 2009 (59)
  • Categories

    • Abortion (258)
    • Advent (26)
    • Biomedical Ethics (82)
    • Birth Control (51)
    • Bishops (87)
    • Black History Month (10)
    • Breast Cancer (65)
    • Christmas (26)
    • Cloning (4)
    • Condoms (16)
    • COVID-19 (1)
    • Darwin (2)
    • Development (6)
    • Dignity (119)
    • Divine Mercy Novenas (10)
    • DNA (3)
    • Embryo Adoption (2)
    • Embryonic Stem Cell Research (6)
    • Eugenics (29)
    • Euthanasia (8)
    • Family (44)
    • Fathers of the Church (11)
    • Fortnight for Freedom (1)
    • Golden Coconut Award (3)
    • Health Care (14)
    • HIV/AIDS (5)
    • Infant Mortality (2)
    • IVF (4)
    • Joseph (6)
    • Lent (17)
    • Margaret Sanger (19)
    • Marriage (6)
    • Maternal Mortality (2)
    • Motherhood (12)
    • Neonates (1)
    • Personhood (20)
    • Physician Assisted Suicide (4)
    • Planned Parenthood (64)
    • Priests (50)
    • Pro-Life Academy (23)
    • Quotes (10)
    • Radio Interviews (3)
    • Right to Life (34)
    • Roots (1)
    • Sex Education (25)
    • Sexually Transmitted Disease (12)
    • Stem Cell Therapy (7)
    • Transgender (1)
    • Uncategorized (208)
  • Pages

    • About
    • BIO
    • Conferences
    • Contact
    • Follow Gerard on FB & Twitter
    • Speaking

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Coming Home
    • Join 857 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Coming Home
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: