John Dearden came to the Archdiocese of Detroit from Pittsburgh. Edward Mooney, who has been Detroit's archbishop, had died while awaiting the openning of the conclave in Rome to elect the successor to Pope Pius XII.
It was in very short order after Mooney's passing that the new archbishop was named.
He came to Detroit with a nickname said to embody his persona.
Iron John!
That was the nickname and reputation that preceded him as he moved to Detroit.
And early on my dealings with Iron John began.
They were remote dealings at first, kind of second hand.
My mom's family had come to Detroit from Pennsylvania, a small - and I really do mean "small" - town called Rossiter. It was a coal mining town where families knew well what it meant to get dirty earning a living.
However, it seems that one of the town's natives had made good for himself. Jacob Shiner had become a priest. Word, as I remember it, was that we were even somehow related. At any rate, this priest, Jacob, rose through the ranks to become the secretary to the then archbishop of Pittsburgh, John Dearden.
First contact point!
And I did tell you that the initial contacts were rather remote!
The second "contact" was rather equally remote.
At the time of the new Archbishop's installation, I was a junior in college at St. Mary's, Orchard Lake. I was also in the choir there and we were asked to join several other choirs in singing for the installation. It was not only a great honor but also something of a mandate. After all, this was the installation of Iron John!
The day of the installation arrived. Rehearsals had taken place. It was time to depart for the event. One small matter remained. Getting there.
It seems that, for a handful of us, our scheduled ride was unable to make it.
And those were the days when seminarians could not own, rent, lease or in any way actually have a car. The only autos on campus were those of faculty and institution employees. And by the time we discovered that our ride was not coming, faculty going to the installation had already departed.
One car remained for certain, at least one that we knew of.
It was that of an elderly philosophy professor who was not attending the event.
However, seminary rules prohibited any faculty from loaning a mere seminarian a car, at least without permission from higher up, meaning the rector of the seminary, and he, of course, had already headed off to the installation.
We begged. We pleaded. We invoked the reputation embodied in that title, Iron John. All to no avail.
Finally one of us, not saying who (protecting reputations) invoked a principle directly from the philosophy class taught by that very professor.
Epikeia!
An awesome, ancient principle of ethics.
Epikeia. n. The principle in ethics that a law can be broken to achieve a greater good.
Iron John will not be happy with this seminary if he learns that we could not get to sing at his installation because of some rule regarding use of faculty automobiles!
Break the law to achieve a greater good! We want him to like us!
And so the keys were handed over to us and we were on our way.
And while that Big Man way up there at the altar of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament never knew it, some voices in that choir that day were singing because reputation that had come with that bishop from Pittsburgh. And a seminary rule had been broken just to make that sound happen.
Iron John had arrived in Detroit!
Watch for more in the weeks to come.
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