The Conversion Specialist
by Michael S. Rose
(Excerpted from Priest: Profiles of Ten Good Men Serving the Church Today.)
"Perhaps the Princeton community and society at large should advise McCloskey to take to drinking nothing but the semen of AIDS patients," wrote one undergraduate student from Princeton University in the pages of the official campus newspaper. The subject was Fr. C. John McCloskey III, serving at the time as assistant chaplain at the elite Ivy League university in New Jersey. The controversy: the priest had written a letter to the Daily Princetonian objecting to a skit performed on campus by "performance sexeducator" Suzi Landolphi, author of Hot, Sexy, and Safer. The comedienne's routine was designed to promote "safer sex," and included having female students stretch oversized condoms over the heads of male classmates while an amused audience cheered them on.
Fr. McCloskey had objected to, among other things, Landolphi's view that students were "salivating animals" who lacked any sense of self-control. For this, the Princeton chaplain was publicly castigated for wanting to "enslave" women in "the holy bond of matrimony" and of "keeping them barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen." This incident was just one among many incited by Princeton students and faculty who objected to Fr. McCloskey's presence on the campus of the nation's fourth oldest college.
Such intemperate criticism, some of which can get very nasty, is all in a day's work for a campus chaplain at a prestigious school such as Princeton, Fr. McCloskey explains in a sanguine tone. "Almost unquestioningly in the elite universities, the environment is generally not hospitable to Catholicism." The values propounded by such schools are in fact "radically anti-Christian." He had his work cut out for him from day one.
Though he himself attended an Ivy–Columbia University in New York City–he is unabashed when he claims that such schools "are where the seeds of the culture of death are planted." That's why he considers his ministry as chaplain on the campuses of Yale and Princeton as missionary work at the heart of the culture of death.
In 1985, Fr. McCloskey began commuting to Princeton's campus three days a week from his home in New York's Upper West Side. Not long after, he was appointed an assistant campus chaplain at the Aquinas Institute, Princeton's equivalent to a Newman Center. He replaced a controversial Jesuit priest who had attracted an unlikely following among Princeton students; in a relatively short period of time, however, Fr. McCloskey became arguably more controversial–not for departing from Catholic teaching as his predecessor had apparently done, but for upholding it.
Partly because of his association with Opus Dei–the organization is often accused of being "secretive" and "controversial"–and partly because he refused to water down Catholicism on campus, Fr. McCloskey attracted some vocal critics who claimed the priest's approach to religion was offensive and oppressive, and that he was trying to establish a "universal hegemonic view" because he dared to disagree with the politically correct views propounded in the academic Ivory Tower. In particular, his insistence on maintaining traditional Catholic teaching on human sexuality incurred strident opposition by an on-campus faction, including well-known faculty members, that went so far as to call for his removal from campus ministry.
What bothered his detractors most was that many Catholics on campus found his authentic Catholic message attractive, and that he was making converts and drawing Catholic students closer to Christ and His Church. For this, he was seen as dangerous and harmful to the status quo. "In a place like Princeton when you make waves," he says, "get ready. There's going to be opposition." Fr. McCloskey knew as much going into the job. In addition to his four years as an undergraduate at Columbia, he had also worked in the cutthroat environment of Wall Street, so he had no illusions about the challenges he would face at Princeton.
The anti-McCloskey faction there claimed that he was "overly negative," "rigid," and "censorious." Translation: they were offended that he was placing an emphasis on personal sin, and counseling students to avoid the near occasions of sin, which are common on just about any college campus. Despite the school's reputation for "diversity" and "openness," it is ironic that some members of the Princeton community wanted Church and university authorities to suppress Fr. McCloskey because they personally found his views on religion and morality distasteful. They accused Fr. McCloskey of wanting to stamp out those who didn't agree with him, yet tried to silence him by demanding his expulsion. And in the end they got their wish: in 1990 the head chaplain, a Catholic priest from the Trenton diocese, decided to dismiss Fr. McCloskey for being too controversial.
Although no longer an official university chaplain, Fr. McCloskey moved to Princeton to serve as chaplain of the Opus Dei-owned Mercer House, located just three blocks from the campus ministry office. In that capacity he continued to assist students and others just as he had done as an official chaplain.
"A little orthodoxy seems to scare a lot of people," he commented when asked why some folks in Princeton, New Jersey, including Catholic priests, were paralyzed by anxiety at his presence. Campus ministry is about catechetics and evangelization, he says, and "orthodoxy"–belief in and adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church–is the main ingredient. Using this logic, it stands to reason that without orthodoxy, campus ministry is rendered ineffectual. And that's just how he characterizes the chaplaincies at most American colleges and universities during the last several decades.
"The general situation of most campus ministries is troubled," he says. "They often find themselves understaffed through the ever-decreasing availability of qualified priests and religious. In more than a few cases, campus chaplaincies have been used as either dumping grounds or refuges for priests or women religious who have not fit in well with their dioceses or communities. From Fr. McCloskey's vantage point, rare is the college chaplaincy that has a coherent plan for total evangelical and catechetical work with all the Catholic students from a lively, orthodox viewpoint."
That's exactly what Fr. McCloskey tried to bring to his own approach to campus ministry: a coherent plan for evangelization and catechesis from a lively, orthodox perspective. He was working, he says, in the "most exotic pagan mission territory in the world," and his goal was "re-evangelizing" a society wherein the past several generations of Catholics were failed in their education in the Faith. For this reason he believes that, after seminary, the college chaplaincy is the single-most important ministry in any diocese. These "elite universities" are the places from which the future leaders of the nation will naturally emerge, he says. "These people are best educated and the most ready to take up leadership positions, which is how we transform the culture."
Again, these schools present certain challenges that one may not find in the typical American parish. Fr. McCloskey likens the situation on today's campuses such as Princeton and Yale to Romans 11. It's a sort of "raw paganism," he explains, but conversions and reconciliation are always ripening for the harvest. That virtue of hope is what spares Fr. McCloskey the discouragement that many Christians feel in such places that have been routed by the forces of secularism, consumerism, and hedonism.
Simply put, he believes that it's necessary to teach college students what the Church teaches, and that evangelizing means introducing them to Jesus Christ. Given the ignorance of the Catholic faith displayed by many, if not most, college students–even on the elite campuses where students are presumably well-educated and generally intelligent–this is an obvious starting point. "It's a lot of fun, and challenging," he says, "because the students are at a point in life when they are looking for answers." Many are jaded and tend toward sophomoric cynicism, some are materialistic, but there are others who are looking for some ideals, searching for truth. The opportunity to expose them to Christian orthodoxy and the Catholic Church, he adds, is an "absolute joy."
In his experience at Princeton and Yale, many of the students came from small families that did not help them grow in the virtues of service, responsibility, and sharing that often come from growing up in a large family. These families are marked by "contraceptive selfishness" and place an emphasis on material gratification and professional success, he says. "Hedonism, prestige, security, power, and ambition are the standards by which they live." To be sure, there is no shortage of ideologies on campuses across the country that cater to such anti-Christian vices. For that reason, Fr. McCloskey also views his evangelical and catechetical mission as counter-cultural. Put simply, he says, a spiritual war is being waged between good and evil. The "civilization of love" that Pope John Paul II has been encouraging for two decades must combat the dominant "culture of death." The college chaplaincy, says Fr. McCloskey, is one important front on that battlefield.
He believes the first battle to be waged is against ignorance. Many students he's met with over the years seem to think that just because they attended twelve years of Catholic schools or CCD programs they have an adequate grasp of Church doctrine and morals. More often he found that the opposite was the case. The students knew little about the Catholic faith, and what little they did know was often distorted by confused notions.
Consequently, the Catholic students were often the most difficult to educate. They've been misled and misinformed by poor Catholic catechetical programs in their parishes and schools. They've received little substantive instruction from the pulpit or in their religion classes. The situation would not be quite so tragic, he says, "if it were not for the fact that often those who have been deformed come prepared to insist on their own vision of Christianity rather than to learn and adhere to the teachings of Christ and His Church." Conversely, public and private school students, he's found, are often much more open to the true teachings of Catholicism. Either way, most students, he says, have a desperate need of intellectual and moral answers to the challenges and pressures around them.
The second battle to be fought in the campus chaplaincy is an uphill one. So much of what occurs in the life of a college student, Fr. McCloskey explains, subjects him to intense pressure to conform with the world, to follow the anti-Christian principles which seem to dominate our culture - principles which place a premium on personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, and often involve the abuse of sexuality.
Academic pressure confronts the student in another way. Most of the courses he will take during his time on campus will not be taught from a Christian standpoint, and many may even mock or ridicule basic Christian values. Likewise, the professors charged with guiding the student's academic progress and grading his work are often generally hostile to Christian doctrine and morals. The books the student will read typically share the professors' viewpoints and will sometimes subtly–or even overtly–undermine the Catholic faith.
"If the college students of today are 'baptized pagans,'" says Fr. McCloskey, it is for the chaplaincy staff to catechize them and help them live their Christian lives fully at college in the midst of their studies and personal relations, preparing them to take on even greater responsibilities in the future with their families and professional work."
Thus, the main end of the chaplaincy, he continues, is to help the student to be reconciled with God and the Church, and to help him to remain and grow in the state of grace. "A student who makes a regular practice of Communion and Confession in college will tend to carry these practices into later life and communicate them to his family and friends."
The means to this main end is uncomplicated: again, evangelization, catechesis, and the sacraments. As a Catholic chaplain, Fr. McCloskey received a list of the Catholic students registered at the school that year. His first step was to make contact with each one of them by either calling or writing them. In this, he followed the example of Monsignor William Nolan, the late long-time chaplain at Dartmouth College, who during his tenure there brought many undergraduates to the Faith through conversion. With this initial contact he generally encouraged the student to meet with him for fifteen minutes. "In my experience," says Fr. McCloskey, "it was quite rare for the student to turn down this gesture of interest and friendliness on the part of the chaplain." These initial meetings, he says, were crucial in order to open up communications with the students early in the school year. If the student is going to withstand the societal and peer pressures of campus life, he needs the countervailing help of other convinced Catholics, both clerical and lay, right from the beginning of his college career. This was a time-consuming and arduous task, he admits, but one that paid immediate dividends for individual students and for the vitality of the campus apostolate.
In these initial meetings he asked each student about his religious life and practice, in order to get a good sense of what is required to help him live out his life as a Christian. For many of these students, he says, the largest obstacle to overcome was the fact that they had not validly received the Sacrament of Penance in some years. Consequently, one of his first tasks was to re-educate the student about the sacrament and how to conduct an examination of conscience. This was typically the first step to getting the student re-involved with the sacraments on a regular basis. To this end, he emphasizes the importance of keeping regular hours in the confessional and not simply by appointment.
Offering such advice does not come without criticism–at least it didn't at Princeton. Fr. McCloskey was accused (by other priests!) of "coercing" students into going to confession, and using interviews with Freshman students to "manipulate" them. But these priests, according to Fr. McCloskey, were simply upset he emphasized the Sacrament of Reconciliation, even though it's the duty of priests at times, he explains, to tell certain people that they are in need of confession. In fact, he see this as a spiritual work of mercy.
The ultimate goal of the initial visit or "interview," he explains, was to elicit a commitment from the student to learn more about his faith. He encouraged this by handing out copies of the Catechism and New Testaments, while pointing out to the student that his knowledge of the Faith should at least be on the same level as his secular studies.
Following this initial interview, some students became involved in some of the activities of the campus chaplaincy, including Sunday Mass, and sometimes daily Mass. He offered courses in Catholicism and periodic retreats with plenty of room for spiritual direction. But the two practices that Fr. McCloskey promoted above all–and still does–is the daily habit of mental prayer and spiritual reading. His hope was that he could gradually help the student to a fuller life of piety: daily Mass, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, examination of conscience, and yes, the habit of making a regular confession.
At Princeton, Fr. McCloskey always kept a list of recommended reading material, not only of spiritual and literary classics written by great lights such as Newman, Chesterton, and Dante, but also informative books written from a Christian perspective that shed light on contemporary issues.
He also composed lists of recommended courses at Princeton each year. Although that may sound innocuous, the anti-McCloskey faction twisted his intentions by claiming that the priest was warning students against taking particular courses. The only evidence they produced to substantiate this claim was a memo from Fr. McCloskey that accompanied the list. The memo stated: "Remember, everything depends on the outlook of the teacher giving the course. The latter may seem quite interesting and stimulating, but if it is given by an anti-Christian, its impact is counter-productive."
For this, Fr. McCloskey was blasted for "censorship," and was said to be violating the very nature of free inquiry. His critics claimed that he had no right to evaluate university courses, no matter how obliquely. In short, Fr. McCloskey's work was seen as detrimental to the welfare of the university.
These sorts of incidents merely confirm the ongoing cultural battle in academia. A priest who is fulfilling his duties of teaching, preaching, and administering the sacraments–and doing it well–can expect the sort of attacks that Fr. McCloskey has endured throughout his tenure as a campus chaplain. But the payoff, he says, far outweighed any problems instigated by those who sought to stifle his ministry and influence. The "payoff" is not always concrete and measurable, but without fail, he says, from among those students who remain close to the chaplaincy there have come vocations, and not only to the priesthood and religious life, but also to a fully dedicated lay life. "The role of the chaplaincy is to serve as an instrument of God to transmit that call to the student," he says. That is how Fr. McCloskey approached his task.
The Opus Dei priest remained in Princeton until 1998, when he "graduated" to his hometown of Washington, D.C. to take over the direction of the Catholic Information Center (CIC), which he calls a "downtown center of evangelization." Instead of ministering to college students, his focus now is winning the hearts of busy–and often cynical–Washingtonians, from fast-food employees to U.S. senators.
"It's a kind of surrogate parish," he says of the CIC. Giving "evenings of recollection," retreats, courses on Catholicism and individual spiritual direction keeps him to a busy and fast-paced schedule. For the past few years, he has given spiritual direction to an average of 25 men and women each week, usually during half-hour meetings with him at his downtown office. "My basic attitude," he says, "is that I never turn down anyone. Everyone is worthy of my attention as a priest." Obviously he has been frequently recommended as a priest who is trustworthy, discreet, and orthodox in his views and in his practice of the Faith. When a priest does his job well, he'll be sought out.
As much as he is sought out, he's also accessible–in person, by phone, and by email. In fact, he takes the time to answer hundreds of questions and queries about the Catholic faith each month that come to him via the Internet. His website, "McCloskey's Perspectives" (www.frmccloskey.com) on which he posts every article he's ever written–and he's written many–keeps him visible and accessible. Part of his mission at the CIC, and anywhere he's ever been or will be, is catechesis. To this end, Fr. McCloskey is not at all afraid to make use of the newest and most powerful means of communication the world has to offer.
"I have a product to sell; I find prospects, and then I go after them," he explains by way of analogy. "My product is the Catholic faith. I'm an open book. I have no secrets. I like to write articles that explain what I do." One article, entitled "Winning Converts," explains Fr. McCloskey's passion for converting souls, but more importantly explains why and how each and every Catholic can and ought to go about the work of making converts. "As followers of Christ," he writes, "we are interested not in winning arguments, but only in our personal 'gift of self' which is never more complete than when we act as God's collaborators in communicating the gift of divine life, God's grace." Following in the footsteps of Catholic philosopher Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Fr. McCloskey looks upon all the people he encounters each day as Catholics in re (in fact) or in spe (potentially).
Indeed, such an approach has made Fr. McCloskey a name as a "specialist" in the business of transforming souls. "Often times," he explains, "those in Washington who are interested in the Catholic faith don't know where their local parish church is or who their pastor is. So they come to me at a highly visible place in downtown Washington." These men and women are often Evangelicals and Jews. "They want a specialist," he says, "not a general practitioner. I'm a specialist in conversions, not by choice, but by reality."
As a specialist, he eschews the more institutional approach to conversion that has unfortunately become the order of the day. "Many people are turned off by the bureaucratic approach that says, 'Hey, if you want to be Catholic then you have to come here every Tuesday night for a year,' or even worse, 'Sorry, our convert program started in late August, so you'll have to wait for next year.'" The Catholic Information Center was set up, in part, to give the kind of individual attention that Fr. McCloskey believes each personal conversion often requires. "I tailor-make my approach to each individual considering his circumstances and try to find out what's best for him," he says.
His record speaks for itself: Fr. McCloskey has aided in the conversions of some noteworthy personalities including Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, Wall Street economist Lawrence Kudlow, political commentator Robert Novak, and conservative publisher Alfred S. Regnery. During his whole life he's been in contact with high-profile people on the East Coast. "That's been my line of fire, so to speak," he admits.
One of his most noteworthy conversions is that of former Jewish abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson. As chronicled in Nathanson's 1996 book The Hand of God, he was involved in abortion for nearly three decades, beginning in 1945, when he persuaded a pregnant girlfriend to abort their child. He would eventually become the director of New York's largest abortion clinic and a co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League. His venture into what he calls "the Satanic world of abortion" included aborting his own child. "What is it like to terminate the life of your own child?" he wrote in his book. "I have aborted the unborn children of my friends, my colleagues, casual acquaintances, even my teachers. There was never a shred of self-doubt, never a wavering of the supreme self-confidence that I was doing a major service to those who sought me out." By the time he was convinced to leave the abortion industry–moved by the images afforded by ultrasound technology–he had presided over 75,000 abortions.
Functioning as an agnostic, he first converted to the pro-life cause. But for more than a decade he walked on the brink of despair, contemplating whether or not to commit suicide. After witnessing an Operation Rescue demonstration at a Manhattan abortion clinic, he started to ask questions about God, and his reading interests eventually turned toward Catholic authors. "[Fr. McCloskey]'d heard I was prowling around the edges of Catholicism," wrote Nathanson. "He contacted me and we began to have weekly talks. He'd come to my house and give me reading materials."
One of the most important aspects about the priest's approach to Dr. Nathanson was that he spoke what the doctor calls "the language of reason and erudition." He was able to unite faith and reason for Nathanson, who said he needed the safety net of reason for his leap of faith. "He guided me down the path to where I am now," he said of Fr. McCloskey, when he was received into the Church by Cardinal John O'Connor in 1989. "I owe him more than anyone else."
Now operating just blocks from the White House, Fr. McCloskey has been disparagingly called "the Catholic Church's K Street Lobbyist." But the priest takes no offense, and accepts the cynical label. Why not? He is, after all, lobbying for souls. And not just the souls of the rich and influential, he says, because for every high-profile conversion like a Nathanson or a Novak there are dozens of everyday people who convert to the Catholic faith under his guidance.
Perhaps because of the prominence of his present assignment, Fr. McCloskey has also become one of the nation's leading priestly pundits, and probably the lone self-described "conservative" Catholic priest among those who are regularly consulted by the national mainstream media on issues pertaining to the Catholic Church. He has appeared on an impressive number of television and radio programs explaining Church teaching and defending the Catholic faith. He has even locked horns on national television with the likes of Gary Wills and Fr. Richard McBrien. He's also often quoted in highly visible newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
One of the main messages he likes getting through in the press is that the Catholic Church will be revitalized in this country by a return to the traditional teachings of the Church. This stands in marked contrast to the relentless push for liberalization in doctrine and discipline as a means of solving problems in the Catholic Church. Such a message brings with it not a little ridicule and mockery, and some particularly harsh criticism from Catholic liberals, but nothing Fr. McCloskey hasn't been able to take in stride.
Just as during his years in Princeton, he must regularly field criticisms of his methods and beliefs. Plenty of that criticism centers around his being a priest of Opus Dei. Critics of this international Catholic group (officially known as a "personal prelature") that is officially recognized by the Pope, claim Opus Dei is secretive and cult-like in their practices. Fr. McCloskey dismisses such criticism, explaining that most of Opus Dei's critics just don't understand that Catholics can dedicate themselves to God as a layman. "That idea is so weird to them that they think Opus Dei is like Jim Jones giving them poison to drink," he explains. Rather, he describes the organization as a "supernatural family in the Church" that promotes the universal call to holiness in all states of life.
Fr. McCloskey first joined Opus Dei when he was a 16-year-old student at St. John's College High School in Washington, D.C. Ironically, he was attracted to the secularity of the group, and the basic idea that one need not be a priest or a religious in order to live a holy life. Indeed, he says, as a child he never had role models who were priests. In fact, a good number of the priests he knew in the 1960's were rather poor examples of the priesthood. Some left while others stayed in the Church and subverted Catholic doctrine.
Fr. McCloskey remained active in Opus Dei throughout his college years at Columbia University, while working 25 hours a week for Citibank down on Wall Street. In both school and in work, he says, he was always conscious of overtly living out his life as a Christian. With the help of his spiritual director he discerned that he was being called to the priesthood, a call that he found surprising since he had always been impressed with Opus Dei's primary focus of living out the Christian life as a layman.
From Manhattan he went overseas to attend seminary at the epicenter of the Catholic Church: Rome. At the Roman College of the Holy Cross, the formation center for Opus Dei priests, the future Fr. McCloskey lived with 160 men from 60 countries from around the globe. "I can't think of any disadvantages of studying in Rome," he says. "I was in the middle of European culture, near the Roman martyrs, and near to the 2,000-year history of Christendom." From there he went to graduate study at the University of Navarre in Spain.
Though he appreciated his years in seminary, where he was influenced by the living example of his professors, he is quick to tell people that he got much more out of his years in Manhattan on Wall Street and at Columbia University than from his seminary experience. "That's what's made it so much easier to deal with people like Lawrence Kudlow or Bernard Nathanson, or street people from Harlem for that matter. It's a lot different than a young man who went to Catholic high school, then Christendom College and on to Mount St. Mary's Seminary. I'm not at all against that, but in a way that man may be a little out-of-touch with some of the realities he'll have to face later in his priesthood."
Washington, D.C. and New York City have shaped the man who became Fr. C. John McCloskey III when he was ordained in Rome in 1982. "I'm not an angry man," he assures, but neither is he cowed by the media or academe. He's armed and dangerous. Armed with the Catholic faith, and dangerous to the enemies of that faith., and a way to salvation for men and women who are seeking Christ. "Priests are warriors for Jesus Christ," he says. "They are the Navy Seals, the Army Rangers, and the Green Berets of the Catholic Church, and I'm proud to serve among her ranks."
Michael S. Rose is author of four books including the NY Times bestseller Goodbye, Good Men. He is a contributing editor to New Oxford Review. His articles and essays have appeared in venues such as The American Conservative, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Catholic World Report and The Wanderer. His latest book, from which this article is excerpted, is Priest: Profiles of Ten Good Men Serving the Church Today. He can be reached by email at: msrose@alumni.brown.edu.
