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Fr. William A. Barry, S.J.
Volume 48

 

SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR,
WRITER, EDITOR




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Father and Mother

My mother was a very kind and genuinely holy woman, though somewhat nervous and frightened. She'd sprinkle holy water around if there was a lightning storm or anything like that. But she was the one person in our extended family who welcomed everyone, even the "black sheep."
My father was a hard worker, very loyal, a good and caring father, but a man with a temper and at times a hard drinker. He always maintained that my mother was the one that saved him. I always thought that the two them together made for a well-balanced, good family. Although they had had little more than a grade school education in Ireland, they encouraged us children to study hard, and were very proud that all four of us finished college, and even got further degrees. My father read a lot, including everything I wrote into his late nineties.

Talking about Religion

After I finished my studies in psychology and clinical psychology, when I came to Weston, I was doing psychotherapy with Jesuits in training for the priesthood. But no one ever talked to me about religion in those sessions, just as they hadn't talked about religion in those sessions in Ann Arbor. I never questioned why this was so, until in the province in 1970, we started to learn how to give the Spiritual Exercises to individuals. I suddenly realized that I could use the clinical training I had to help people talk about experiences of God. That's when I came to the conclusion that I had been acting in a way similar to the way my professor had acted when he began doing psychoanalysis, unconsciously giving signals that we don't talk about religion in counseling sessions.

Vice Provincial for Formation

I was a province consultor from about 1972 onwards. The provincial had approached me about different jobs when he was looking for vice provincials. And I was able to convince him that what I was doing at Cambridge was a good idea. That's when he made me a province consultor.
When he created vice provincials, there were over 1,100 Jesuits in the New England Province, and beginning with General Congregation 31, we had recovered the importance of a serious account of conscience with the provincial each year. One provincial could not hear the account of conscience as it should be done for that many men. The provincial's original idea was that these vice provincials would be actually in charge of their subdivision in the New England Province. As he saw it, they would be the actual provincial for their area.

Challenges as Provincial

I enjoyed the job of being provincial very much. And I also enjoyed the time when it was over. I found that we had to do something about health care in the province. I also learned something about finances. The first thing I did was to look into buying into Medicare, which meant buying into Social Security.
We had already done that at Boston College because of a catastrophic illness in the Jesuit community the year before I became rector that threatened to send Blue Cross/Blue Shield sky high for everybody in the university.
Jesuits over 65 were not in Medicare. Health care costs were affecting everybody negatively. So we were able to get the Jesuits of the province into Social Security in order to qualify for Medicare.

 

Born: November 22, 1930, Worcester, Massachusetts

• Entered: August 14, 1950, Lenox, Massachusetts, St. Stanislaus Novitiate/Shadowbrook

• Ordained: June 16, 1962, Weston, Massachusetts, Weston College

 
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