THE EFFECACIOUS LIFE OF JOE DOOLEY [F, 11-12-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

When I needed a priestly presence for the marriage of the United Methodist Katie McFarland to the Roman Catholic Patrick Kennedy, at St. Patrick’s in Urbana, IL, naturally I called on my Academy of Parish Clergy buddy, Father Joe Dooley, to come over from Macedonia…err, I mean, Indianapolis, to help me. [Acts 16:9. Yeah, the roles are sort of reversed, but you get the idea.]

It is hard to believe that Joe Dooley died way back on March 29 in 2004. Unfortunately, his obit, provided I’m sure by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, where he was a priest for 59 years, did not mention his membership in The Academy of Parish Clergy. [APC]

The APC is a professional organization of pastors, of all denominations, and Joe was one of its first and most faithful members. It is composed mostly of clergy in traditional Protestant denominations—Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and such—but with several Roman Catholics, including nuns, and even a few Jewish rabbis and Islamic imams.

The one and only purpose of APC is to help one another become better parish leaders, by “sharing the practice,” which is the name of the APC journal. We don’t talk about theology or society. We talk about ministry. By sharing our practice of ministry with one another, we learn new and better ways of leading professionally, and also we support and encourage one another emotionally and spiritually.

Joe was one of the best at that. He attended every annual conference, walking from a bus or train stop, in his black clergy suit and clerical collar, carrying his small black valise. That valise contained all he needed—his missal, a change of socks and underwear, and his famous blue knit golf shirt, which he wore on the second day of the conference, while his traveling socks and underwear were drying after their wash in his room. Since Indianapolis was centrally located for the Midwest Chapter of The APC, he invited us to his home for chapter meetings, for sharing the practice.

Joe was retired when I first met him, and I was immediately attracted to him. He was a Hoosier Irish man, short, white-haired, twinkling eyes. You immediately thought of Barry Fitzgerald playing the older priest in a Bing Crosby movie. But you dared not be fooled by his “just another parish priest” routine. He did his seminary at St. Meinrad and then earned a doctorate in theology from Catholic University in Washington, DC and a PhD from the University of Ottawa. Before his career in parish ministry, he taught college, at St. Mary of the Woods in Terre Haute and at Marian in Indianapolis. He was known in APC not only as Joe but as Double Doctor Dooley.

That was part of the problem at Katie’s and Patrick’s wedding. The priest at St. Patrick’s, Father George Remm, was an old acquaintance of mine. He was okay with me doing the service, because he knew I would leave out the handling snakes part. But he had to be out of town on their wedding date, which is why we needed Joe.

We had it all worked out. I walked Katie down the aisle, wearing my tux. Then, while Father Joe welcomed the assemblage, I ducked into the vestry and exchanged my tux jacket for my pulpit robe and came back out to officiate the wedding.

Joe, though, was overcome by his great learning, and this opportunity to address a group that had a large number of Methodist preachers in it. His welcome included a dissertation on “efficacious signs,” of which marriage apparently is one, or something like that. But the congregation was still standing. And Joe, like many a preacher on any subject, could not find a place in the explanation of efficacious signs to quit.[1] The people were beginning to sag, when I heard some anonymous preacher in the congregation, whose name is Paul Unger, mutter, “Stop is an efficacious sign,” and I thanked Joe in the middle of a sentence and told folks to sit down, and we got those two well married.

Joe was smart in many ways. He worked out a method where a congregation had to listen to him all the way through: he said mass each week at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, in both Spanish and American Sign Language.

Joe was active in Archdiocese activities, such as Defender of the Bond and member of The Priestly Secular Institute of the Heart of Jesus. In the winters, he taught in a theological seminary in Costa Rica.

All that was listed in the obit the Archdiocese provided for him. His membership in APC was not. That pains me, for I know how important that ecumenical dimension was to him.

I suspect, however, that the “great cloud of witnesses” we like to talk about has an ecumenical wing for “sharing the practice of angeling,” even if The Archdiocese of Indianapolis doesn’t know about it.

John Robert McFarland

1] Joe Dooley had a good and clear subject that day, but the event reminds me of the fill-in pastor at Lake Wobegon Lutheran who, Garrison Keillor said, “was able to talk until he hit upon a subject.”