We are gathered in St. Patrick’s Manor, Father Ernest’s home for the past five years and eight months. It is a place where Fr. Ernest’s friends and relatives gladly gave and Ernest gladly received. Visits from his friends and relatives meant the world to Fr. Ernest: the conversation, the love, the food, the beer, the wine, and the hard liquor. (Ed Lev used to tease Fr. Ernest about the last, saying “Ernest, you only appreciate my visits because of the booze I bring.”) A number of people have told me that Fr. Ernest struggled to stay alive in the last few weeks so that he might be with everyone last Sunday, October 20, 2002, for the celebration of the festschrift published in his honor. Fr. Ernest’s friends gladly gathered to be with him and to enjoy one another’s company.
Only God knows all the kind words and acts prompted by Fr. Ernest’s illness. So many people were so loyal and kind to him, and now treasure memories of time spent with him. It was fitting for him to receive a hundredfold in this life because he gave so much of himself to God, to his students, colleagues, friends and fellow Assumptionists. “Gentle and generous,” said Fr. Paul McNellis, S.J.—but not soft. He generously helped people with their personal problems and spent much time reading papers, articles, and book-length manuscripts by his students and colleagues.
I first came in contact with Fr. Ernest in the fall of 1959 as a freshman at Assumption College. My classmates and I soon sensed that we had a highly unusual teacher of theology and philosophy, one who was also a dedicated scholar. Etched in my memory is an image of Ernest’s quickening pace as he walked between the dorms on the way to scholarly work in his own dormitory room. Learning was the passion of this man with unbounded intellectual curiosity. Once we got to know him, we wouldn’t dream of knocking on his door unless we could think of something intelligent to say—and even then, we would hesitate. We knew he was reading and writing and wouldn’t take kindly to a frivolous interruption. Later in life I thought of our hesitation when I read in the Confessions about Augustine’s unwillingness to disturb Ambrose when he was reading.
Even though we occasionally referred to Fr. Ernest as “the Big E” and as “Deus” we gradually saw that he was friendly, able to engage in small talk, incredibly generous with his time, and blessed with a delightful sense of humor. Fr. Ernest’s sense of humor was so engaging that his talks at pep rallies before a big basketball game were eagerly anticipated. His performances at these events were much more memorable than the games themselves. He would often draw on the Bible for appropriate stories. As I recall, the opponents usually were the uncircumcised Philistines.
I personally took notice of Fr. Ernest’s friendship with Fr. Denys Gonthier, a linguist and psychologist, among other things. Ernest once wrote in Assumption’s magazine that students would try to keep their minds blank as they passed Fr. Denys, for fear that he would discern their thoughts. Ernest and Denys would walk around campus almost every evening after supper, chatting and laughing. Ernest sorely missed his friend when he died early in 1980.
Although we students had no idea what Fr. Ernest was studying and writing we developed great respect for him, even outside the classroom. One day, students in the dining hall were making an enormous amount of noise. One Assumptionist after another came out of the adjoining dining room to quiet things down. To no avail. At length, Fr. Ernest walked out, scowled at us and snapped his fingers. We fell silent and behaved ourselves.
“Gladly to learn and gladly to teach.” How fitting a phrase to sum up Fr. Ernest Fortin’s life. He taught us all—in the classroom, in seminars, at Bradley lectures, in the hall, in print, in our visits to him in his book-laden and book-strewn apartment (the fastidious among us may even have described his quarters as messy). He taught us by his disapproving glances and pregnant silences, in his one-liners and in his more extensive descriptions of our personal or professional failings. He expected you to respond to him as Alypius did to Augustine. Alypius, as you will recall, “was quite fatally devoted to the [gladiator] games,” and Augustine was worried that he would not fulfill his promise. One day Alypius walked into Augustine’s class and heard his teacher illustrate a point “by a comparison taken from the games, a comparison,” Augustine said, “which would make the point I was establishing clearer and more amusing, and which involved biting mockery of those who were slaves to that particular insanity” (my emphasis). Of Alypius’s reaction Augustine wrote, “Another might have taken it as a reason for being angry with me, but the youth was honest enough to take it as a reason for being angry with himself and for warmer attachment to me.” Not that Fr. Ernest was right all the time, but he could be quite on target, especially in his areas of expertise. I know that his criticisms of me were all true. At any rate, Fr. Ernest didn’t go as far as his good friend Allan Bloom, who would sometimes say, “I haven’t read the book, but I will tell you all about it anyway.”
Those who lived closely with Ernest, his brother Assumptionists, admired and respected him, but at times found him too critical. (Fr. Ernest, in typical self-deprecation, actually said about himself: “There is nothing greater in me than my pride.”) Indeed, there are not a few who felt they never could quite measure up to his impossible expectations. They were probably right. No essay was ever complete enough, no talk lucid enough, no secondary source sufficiently on target. Like the demanding father who expects too much of the children he loves, Fr. Ernest wanted those around him to be smart, articulate, facile with language, productive, successful, learned, and so many other things. And, like the demanding father who is often disappointed, he had a hard time hiding it.
A Christian, a Catholic priest, a teacher, a scholar, a philosophizing theologian, political philosopher, student of great books, a mentor, a devoted step-son to Mimi (his step-mother), a brother, a friend, a lover of all things good: these are some of the words that come to mind in trying to capture Ernest’s life. His dear friend, Father Matthew Lamb, whose gentle care during Ernest’s illness touched all who were fortunate enough to witness it, speaks movingly about Ernest’s life as a Christian: “At one of our early meetings I told him how I missed the communal divine office and mass at the monastery, and he was kind enough to invite me to join the Assumptionists at a daily Eucharistic community for lauds and mass. Before his stroke we would go for walks after mass, where we would discuss what we had been reading and other topics of the day.”
Fr. Matt, recalls,
In the week before Ernest went in for his heart operation, he mentioned that he hoped not to end up so debilitated after the surgery that he could not read and write. When he learned of the stroke, it was a heavy blow…. We talked about fate and Divine providence and prayer. When I first brought up how now he would have to explore those other dimensions of contemplation and quiet prayer that St. Augustine wrote about, he replied, ‘Matt, my vocation was as a scholar, not a contemplative monk!’ As the months lengthened into years, Ernest became more interested in speaking about prayer. We would pray the psalms and I would discuss aspects of Augustine’s commentary on the psalms we had prayed.
As the discomfort and pain of his condition grew, our conversations would turn to Augustine’s theology of the Cross. He was interested in understanding how Augustine could understand the sufferings of Christ on the Cross as assuming all the sufferings of each and every human being He, as the Word, had created in love. I recall the tears he shed when I told him about how God infinitely loves us, and we all know that we suffer greatly when those we love suffer. The occasion of this conversation was the sufferings his dear Mimi was undergoing. He grasped the reality of this divine co-suffering and his own participation in it as his love for Mimi led to his co-suffering with her.
Fr. Matt continues,
We discussed in these last weeks how Mimi’s strong faith gave her a wisdom that transcended whatever we could acquire on our own. In many ways, Mimi was to Ernest what Monica was to Augustine. There is a light of faith and divine wisdom that was beckoning Ernest as it had Augustine at Ostia, to a joy earth could not contain.
Ernest’s devotion to Mimi speaks volumes—of a grateful son and a devoted step-mother. As Mimi’s death and burial marked the beginning of the end of Ernest’s life with us, so his passing marks the beginning of his life basking in the light of divine wisdom. Fr. Matt quotes a passage from Augustine’s Soliloquies to sum up Ernest’s attitude toward wisdom:
I do love wisdom alone and for its own sake, and it is on account of wisdom that I want to have or fear to be without other things, such as life, tranquility, and my friends. What limit can there be to my love of beauty, in which I do not only not begrudge it to others, but I even look for many who will long for it with me, sigh for it with me, possess it with me, enjoy it with me; they will be all the dearer to me the more we share that beloved wisdom in common.1
Some may not realize how integral a part of his life mass and prayer were. On that subject, I offer you a reminiscence. On the night before last thanksgiving, my wife, Father Matt Lamb, and I were visiting Ernest. In the course of conversation he asked Janet what holiday we were celebrating. “Thanksgiving,” she said, sadly pondering the difficulty of Ernest’s not being able to remember what day or time of year it was. After we had eaten and were about to leave, Fr. Matt asked Ernest if he would like to say compline. Matt took out his prayer book and he and I read in Latin. Janet recalls, “I looked over and Ernest was saying the prayers from memory in Latin.” Father Lamb recalls that Ernest relished praying the Psalms in Latin.
To those who knew him well, Ernest was many things, but he was, above all, a priest and a Catholic theologian. Fr. Matt’s testimony clearly reveals that Fr. Ernest was a priest of the Catholic Church. Its doctrine was his doctrine, its practice his practice, and its prayer his prayer. But he was also a pre-eminent Catholic theologian. He understood our Christian faith so profoundly, and modernity so awfully well, that he knew that the former had to be protected from aspects of the latter. And protect it he did, with his immense learning in theology and political philosophy. On whom else would he bestow the awesome task of defending the faith against its modern foes than on Augustine and Aquinas within the fold and on the ancient classical authors outside the fold, whom he loved so well and whose wisdom leads us closer than anything else to the threshold of Christianity? He was especially good at showing how the Church’s understanding of justice and peace in America failed to appropriate perennially valid insights from classical political philosophy and the writings of Augustine and Aquinas. He knew that the Church was in danger of losing its soul by failing to understand the difference between the Ancients and the Moderns, and between classical philosophy and Christianity. In my mind, his writings could help the Church preserve the integrity of Christianity and develop an approach to justice and peace more grounded in the grand Catholic tradition. In other words, Ernest’s writings both help to keep open the path to a pure, undiluted Christianity and also teach the Church, in an authoritative way, how to approach her work for justice. Many of his friends and students will help keep this legacy alive. Whether the majority of Catholic theologians will discover or rediscover Ernest’s thought remains to be seen.
During the last five years Fr. Ernest would say that he was doing his purgatory right now. Few would not see that his five years and eight-plus months were very difficult. Not being able to read and walk was an immense suffering for a man who once said to me back in the early 1960s, “I want to die with my boots on.” He did not get his wish, but he certainly had the opportunity to atone for his sins and failings. My hope is that the consideration of these sufferings will elicit forgiveness from anyone who needs to forgive him. It will be a great loss if Ernest’s legacy does not survive among the Assumptionists.
Saint Catherine of Siena, a fourteenth century author recommended by Fr. Ernest to Marc Guerra when he was a graduate student, said the following about the death of the just in words she attributes to God:
The just…have lived in charity and die in love. If they have lived perfectly in virtue, enlightened by faith, seeing with faith and trusting completely in the blood of the Lamb, when they come to the point of death they see the good I have prepared for them. They embrace it with the arms of love, reaching out with the grasp of love to me, the supreme and eternal good, at the very edge of death. And so they taste eternal life before they have left their mortal bodies. … So no one waits to be judged. They taste it and possess it even before they leave their bodies at the moment of death….2
Just before he died, according to the testimony of Sister Daniel, a Carmelite sister at St. Patrick’s, Fr. Ernest said that he saw something beautiful.
As Monica said to Augustine when she was dying, remember me at the altar where the holy victim is offered. Ernest would be happy if we would do the same.
J. Brian Benestad
University of Scranton
notes
- St. Augustine, Soliloquies I, 22.
- Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 89.