I had taken a leave of absence from medical school
(Marquette) in the spring of 1958 after my freshman year for the purpose of
going to Rome nine months later. I had joined Opus Dei the previous February
and was offered the opportunity to be in Rome with the founder, St. Josemaria
Escriva, and to pursue studies in philosophy and theology while there. While
life changing, the choice was clear to me. I stayed in Chicago until the
following June filling in some gaps in my education (calculus and searches in
philosophy). My mother was beside herself for all the logical reasons: what was
Opus Dei? why was I throwing away my life for the unknown?, etc., etc.
As the
date approached to leave for Rome in June she pulled out all stops. She
had no access to significant personalities from my university years since I had
studied in Toronto, Canada, and logically went to what was for her power
sources to get some traction with me. She went to the headmaster of my high
school (Xavier [Jesuit] whom she knew well and a person who was notorious in my
house, Antonin Scalia.
Scalia
and I spent four years at Xavier from 1949 to 1953 studying in the same home
room and taking the same classes (except he took French and I took German in
Sophomore and Junior years). We did four years of Latin and three of Greek and
found ourselves duly exercised particularly in Latin – Junior year – under the
tutelage of a wonderful Jesuit, Fr. Morton Hill - who drove us relentlessly
through the five declensions of nouns and four conjugations of verbs under
pressure of a stop watch. We were marked on speed and accuracy every morning.
This was followed by approximately thirty lines of Cicero’s Catiline Conspiracy to translate, translating an English sentence into Latin with all
the pitfalls of using verbs that take the dative or ablative instead of the
accusative, and all this in indirect discourse where the subject of the
infinitive is in the accusative except where the infinitive would take the
dative. Daunting piece of work. Every day.
We were
on the phone many nights, and through the misery, you get to be good friends.
There wasn’t a time in the following decades that we did not resort to the
common ease of conjugating an irregular Greek verb – particularly the principal
parts of “to go:” ercomai, eimi, ailthon,
elelutha (as it were) - and laugh
with the sheer joy of remembering it, and pulling it out of some recondite
cavity we both had within.
My
mother called Scalia (I did not know it). He and Fr. John J. Morrison, S.J. appeared
at my house in Jamaica, Queens. The priest tried to give me a sense of timing
and proportion, which I thanked him for. Nino came up to my room (actually my
brother’s), asked what this was all about. I explained Opus Dei as I understood
it, the imperative I experienced to give it all – now – in this radical way of
being in the world and living Christ
- doing it. [Contemporaries, he
had graduated from Georgetown and was in his second year at Harvard Law. I don’t
think he had met Maureen yet]. He took in everything I said, and got it.
“Sounds good to me.” As for himself, he was on his way
to the Supreme Court, and knew it.
I don’t
know what he said to my mother on the way out, but it was decisive. He had the
stature and authority then to calm nerves. I appreciated then that he took the
time and effort to do what he did, and seeing it now in the perspective of who
he is, I love him for it. What was astounding to me over the years was his
loyalty to that friendship built on a few Latin and Greek verbs.
There was also the French Horn and the Trumpet, but let's not go into that.
Rev. Robert A. Connor
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