A Man In Search of a Language Father Griffin was a man with a problem. And it was a big one.

Professor Angela Davis, an outspoken Marxist and Black Panther sympathizer, had been indicted for complicity in the abduction and murder of a California judge. Because Griffin's St. Andrew church had the largest speaking hall in the black community, her mother, a devout Episcopalian, had requested its use for the purpose of raising money for Davis's defense. His problem: to refuse the request would violate all Griffin stood for as a free thinking man and a Catholic priest; to grant the request would outrage Portland's conservative Catholic community and subject Griffin not only to public censure, but to the possible loss of one or both of his positions. Not only was he the St. Andrew parish priest, he was also chancellor of the Portland Archbishopric. He agreed to the request, outraging the Catholic community and prompting a cascade of accusatory calls and editorials, to which Griffin responded in his own defense by citing the case of another female activist, this one an infamous, Irish-Catholic community favorite, as well as a member of England's parliament: "Bernadette Devlin is a Marxist. What if her mother were to come and ask to use my hall to raise money to protect her from an English jail?" His critics were unimpressed. The result: Griffin was fired from his post as Chancellor of the Archbishopric. Griffin's response to Archbishop Dwyer's decision to terminate him was to remind him that he'd been sent to relate the church to the community, that the firing would be viewed by the community as a racist act, confirming long held suspicions that the church was essentially racist, itself. After careful consideration, Dwyer rescinded his decision to relieve the priest of his duties.

Volunteers working with the institutional support of Marylhurst University, and funded by a Meyer Memorial Trust Legacy of Hope grant, have assembled a remarkably comprehensive

collection of homilies and interviews transcribed from audiotapes recorded throughout the 1990's. This record chronicles the inspiring career of Father Bertram Francis Griffin, a man who found himself on a path to controversy that began in the 1950's and ended with his death in the year 2000. Of that earlier era, Griffin said, "The difficulty in that age, the '50s, was that many of us knew that there was something wrong with both the theology we were being taught and the way of life that we were being led into, but we didn't have the language to critique it." This from a solid, six foot, barrel-chested basso profundo fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, French and English by the time he was thirty years old; this from a brilliant, ebullient, blue-eyed lawyer, theologian, philosopher and community organizer as willing to discuss French intellectualism as he was the plight of immigrant field workers. Better known to his friends as 'Bert,' Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California on January 28, 1932 the eldest of six children, three girls and three boys. "Both my parents were bright...my dad had a Catholic education and got his law degree at Georgetown." Priorities were clear: in a house that revolved around literature and books, if you were reading, you could stay up as long as you wanted. But these were priorities unshared by the Portland, or even the American Catholic clerical tradition. Said Griffin: "Catholics were just beginning to get an intellectual life in this country. We were the people who built the railroads, the sewers, and who were in the police force. Our forebears, if they had an education, as my dad and mother had, weren't influential in Catholic life. The intellectual world is not something that was terribly important. I don't think the bishops wanted very intellectual priests. They and wanted priests who would be docile, build schools, do what they were told, celebrate the sacraments." Griffin was ordained a Catholic priest in 1957, on the cusp of Vatican II, an intellectual gold mine that transformed his life and significantly affected the Portland community as a result.

Officially known as The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Vatican II ran from 1962 to 1965 and included among its far reaching reforms nothing less than a new vision of the role of the church in modern life, as well as a new focus on the shared religious vision of all Christians. Of Vatican II, Hans Kung, expert theological advisor to the council, writes: "its primary purpose...was church reunion, and it would be reached when the Catholic Church could deem its traditional doctrine itself not as unchangeable but rather as a historical, spatiotemporal expression of God's eternal truth." Ironically, Griffin, a priest admittedly lacking a language to express his doctrinal misgivings, was chosen by Portland's Catholic hierarchy to spend this time in Rome. As was then the custom, Griffin was not consulted on the move; he was simply informed. "I was just picked up and told: 'You're going to Rome to study canon law.' I was not given a choice as to what I would study." It proved to be a fortuitous event in the maturation of the young priest: "Those three years transformed my life, really, my priesthood, my spirituality." Griffin would say it was in Rome that he began to understand the humanity of Christ and, subsequently, the humanity of the church. He called it a very liberating experience, especially in light of the very "stultifying" seminary training he had received in the United States: "The spirituality that I got from the seminary was pretty much a 'vale of tears' spirituality--this world is here to be transcended and to get to heaven as safely as that the world you possibly can. Whereas Vatican II began to emphasize the fact itself has autonomous values that are worth working with."

Vatican II was a smorgasbord of renowned theologians and philosophers, interlocutors sought not only for formal lectures and instruction, but for casual conversation, as well. The young priest's travels introduced him to an entirely new set of friends and the collegial atmosphere in which

Father Griffin would finally discover the language he'd sought, a diverse idiom that would allow him to not only speak his mind, but his conscience, as well. As it turned out, his conscience held long dormant seeds of social awareness. Years before, as a young student and self-described nerd at Portland's Central Catholic high school, Griffin encountered representatives from the Urban League invited to the school to talk about racism and the effects of stereotyping. He also learned of the Catholic Evidence Guild and street preaching in downtrodden communities where primary concerns had far less to do with doctrine and faith, far more to do with wages, labor unions and racial discrimination. Those dormant seeds were finally nourished: "It was Vatican II that opened up my mind that the church is founded not only on Scripture, Eucharist and the sacraments, but also on the movement of the church in the area of justice." This coming of age would chart the young priest's direction for the rest of his professional life. Griffin's participation in Vatican II also foretold an era, a later unfolding of a new Catholic social consciousness in Portland, one that made room for creative use of Griffin's intellectual gifts. Griffin moved forward with what he considered the certainty that ecumenism and cooperation in social ministry must go hand in hand. Involvement in CAP (Community Action Programs), a grouping of associations of churches committed to social ministry, was Griffin's next step. "This was the first time I'd ever met a Protestant minister in my life..." At the time, the more conservative among Portland's Catholic hierarchy considered this "extra-church" involvement questionable, if not rebellious. Griffin didn't care: "I can remember several of us deciding that the only way really to be free in the church is to have no ambition...to decide that you really don't want to be a bishop...would give you the freedom to do God's will..." As justification for this selfemancipation, Griffin, this priest and canon lawyer, went on to cite Vatican II documents and the "authority of service" concept, a notion that many thought undermined the traditional authority of

church bishops by co-opting their influence for the sake of a subjectively determined, higher good. Griffin clearly saw authority of service as the new definition of power. The impact of this conclusion was found in its practice. The late sixties in Portland, like the rest of America, was marked by social upheaval and division. Griffin's break with Portland's Catholic hierarchy reflected those infecting other institutions, even families throughout the country as a whole, and was exacerbated by his willingness to counsel conscientious objectors: "I worked with the kids to get them to make the linkage between their opposition to the Vietnam war and their Catholic training, because that was how you got the conscientious objector status." Many Catholics considered Griffin a traitor as a result. Griffin, although he had no intention of chaining himself to a draft board's doors, knew poor people were suffering, that others were racially oppressed and the church had a responsibility to do something. It was then, in 1970, that he was ready to take this awareness to Northeast Portland and St. Andrew Parish, where his thirteen year stay transformed an entire community. The first task: to organize forums in which the community could be heard. He started small, with coffees to which both black and white parishioners were invited. He soon learned social concerns extended far beyond the Catholic community, so use of church facilities for the good of the community became axiomatic. The church hall became the community center, and the community responded in kind; The Hadassah from Temple Beth Israel rebuilt the church gym after it burned, muting Catholic insiders' parochialism. Nurses in the community gathered, forming the St. Andrew Health Help Center. A free clinic was set up as an alternative to Multnomah County Hospital, resulting in complaints from the Catholic Physicians Guild that Griffin was a Socialist. Griffin had found a way to not only express, but to demonstrate his positions within the context of the newfound

Catholic consciousness he'd discovered in Rome. He had also found a growing audience willing, even eager to listen to people like the mother of Angela Davis. It was an audience reflecting a broad cross section of the American community that found Christian faith to be only one component of social progress. Having come to the attention of Catholic leaders elsewhere, Father Griffin was asked by a Father Jack Egan, of the Archdiocese of Chicago, to participate in a Chicago group known as the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry. Egan had worked with Saul Alinsky, Chicago's well known social agitator and author of the 1969 primer on community organizing, Reveille for Radicals. Griffin's travels to consult with Egan impressed him with the activist's dedication to organizing as a tool, Griffin elaborating on what he learned: "In the sixties and seventies it became really evident that as important as the food basket at the door was, there was also a need to organize so people could get jobs so they wouldn't have to get the food basket..." Griffin concluded that the purpose of organizers' outrageous behavior is to establish a balance of power, that people without power might find enough to negotiate. Playing out against this backdrop of social activism was another of Griffin's roles, that of canon lawyer. Having obviously held his intellect in high esteem, it was the Portland Archbishopric that had made the initial decision to send him to canon law school in Rome. His discovery while there that Catholic doctrine included a world of authentic value, and that the clergy had a responsibility to interact with and change it, Griffin would use to proceed in completion of not only his canon law studies, but in his later role as a visiting canon law lecturer at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. The most important lesson, in his opinion: that civil law may seek to establish justice, but canon law must place unconditional love above all else; that canon law is a structure for maintaining communio (a community of love), a love that unites. In

this spirit, Father Griffin had the following calligraphic prologue to Gratian's Decretum hung on his wall: Any teacher of canon law who either teaches or implements the law in such a way that he promotes the reign of love, neither sins nor errs. For the whole purpose of the institutions of the church is the promotion of love of neighbor and the salvation of souls.

In 1983, this fully integrated man, this liberated priest and canon lawyer with a social conscience so well known and revered in Portland's inner city, found himself at the mercy of rules and regulations that irrevocably limited his time at St Andrew's. Thus his transfer to St Pius parish, a suburban enclave with concerns far removed from those of St. Andrew's. This, plus his final assignment, a 1996 move to St. Michael the Archangel parish, brought an opportunity to not only bring his own version of social activism to other parts of the city, but a return to the feel of a Catholicism Griffin had left behind. Griffin's preaching was a scholarly process throughout. Weekly sermon preparation always began with reading of the scriptures in the original Greek or Hebrew. A typical sermon would include a homily, current events, as well as what was going on in the congregation culminating in affirmation of the good things. His justification was simple: "Why scold them for the sins that are being committed by people who aren't there anyway?" His attitude in his final days reflect a lifetime's worth of work, as well as the language he so assiduously sought: "Some of the people I admire most are people who have been terribly oppressed and have no bitterness..." It seems neither bitterness, nor fear afflicted Father Griffin. One need look no further than his deathbed remarks reported in the July 27, 2000 issue of Portland's Oregonian newspaper: "I'm not going to frighten myself about the future...this would be hard if I allowed myself to turn it into

a miserable experience. But my spirit is not afraid if I keep my mind on today, if I live today." Father Bertram Francis Griffin died of prostate cancer less than twenty-four hours later.

Sources

Griffin, Bertram Francis Father. Bertram Francis Griffin, 1932-2000, A Life and Ministry; Recollections. Pub: Portland, OR 2000. Legacy of Hope Oral History Project. Haught, Nancy. "Clergyman's vision inspires many to follow." Portland Oregonian 27 July 2000. Haught, Nancy. "Father Griffin, Portland priest, dies at age 68." Portland Oregonian 29 July 2000. Haught, Nancy. "Tribute will honor life and vision of Father Griffin." Portland Oregonian 2 Feb. 2001. Hannum, Kristen. "Gospel, liturgy and social ministry characterize Southwest Portland parish." The Catholic Sentinel 7 August 1992. New World Encyclopedia. "Vatican II." 8 Feb. 2009. http//www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ entry/vatican_II?oldid=921728 Smith, Dan. "Goodbye, Father Bert." Reflections. St. Pius Parish Vol. XIII.2 (1996).