No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace

John Jay Hughes is sui generis: the first Anglican priest conditionally ordained to the Catholic priesthood; a direct descendant of John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, and so perhaps the only person whose name appears in both the Social Register and the Official Catholic Directory; a groundbreaking scholar and gifted teacher who never received tenure. Yet, No Ordinary Fool—his deeply personal, even idiosyncratic, memoir—opens windows into modern and contemporary Christianity.

Two themes, entwined, dominate this book: Hughes's love for the priesthood and his journey from Episcopalianism to Catholicism. This is a man who yearned from age twelve to serve at the altar. A gifted preacher who has published several volumes of homilies, he makes clear that the high point of his day is the Mass:"no man ever longed more ardently for the arms of his beloved than I for that daily encounter with the Lord" (p. 305). The priesthood, he writes, is "all I ever wanted" (p. 28).

This vocation was threatened by his reception into the Catholic Church. Hughes was an Anglo-Catholic whose faith was thoroughly liturgical. He never had a Protestant bone in his body, by his own admission, but harbored doubts about papal infallibility and primacy. He also was repulsed by the anti-intellectualism and sloppy worship of an immigrant, Irish-dominated American Catholicism. He wrestled, too, with betraying the church that had given him his faith, fed him with its sacraments, and ordained him to the priesthood. After a decade-long struggle that included thoughts of suicide, he entered the Catholic Church on Easter Monday, 1960.

"Leaving the Episcopal Church was, beyond question, the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life,"he writes, but "entering the Catholic Church was the best thing I have ever done" (p. 194). He never again saw his beloved priest father, who deemed the move to be a rejection of the validity of Anglican orders. Most profoundly, Hughes also accepted that he might never serve again as a priest—his greatest joy and deepest identity—for he held absolute ordination as a Catholic priest to be a rejection of his Episcopal ministry. Aided by a letter from the Holy Office that indicated no barrier to his conditional ordination, he was finally ordained a Catholic priest in 1968 by Bishop Joseph Höffner of Münster (later cardinal archbishop of Cologne).

His ordination was soon followed by the completion of a dissertation at the University of Münster that argued for a reconsideration of Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of Anglican orders. Published as two landmark books—"Absolutely Null and Utterly Void" (Washington, DC, 1968) and Stewards of the Lord (London, 1970)—Hughes's work decisively changed the state of the question and continues to influence ecumenical dialogue.

Throughout, No Ordinary Fool is by turns delightful, wrenching, and insightful. It is delightful in its humor and reminiscences of a "magical" (p. 30) upbringing in Manhattan and Newport; as well as wrenching in its accounts of the early death of Hughes's mother, estrangement from his father, and his sufferings caused either by others or himself. It is insightful in its ecclesial acuity and spiritual wisdom, not least on the futility of Christian ministry apart from a discipline of daily prayer.

The reader wishes, selfishly perhaps, for more comment on the conciliar and postconciliar eras. Hughes experienced Vatican II's ecumenicity and humility as one who had "backed a dark horse and saw him come home a winner"(p. 226), but his reservations about some postconciliar developments merit expanded discussion. His account of doctoral studies at University of Münster likewise offers tantalizing, but undeveloped, anecdotes about an all-star faculty that included Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, Johann Baptist Metz, and Joseph Ratzinger (whose lectures remain the most beautiful Hughes has ever heard). His dismissive and unsympathetic portrayal of preconciliar American Catholicism raises questions, while his comment that those Catholics lacked "interest in the social dimension of the Gospel" (p. 126) seems unfair in light of their unparalleled network of schools, hospitals, and other social service agencies.

These caveats aside, this "no ordinary fool" has had no ordinary life, and his memoir is marked by uncommon grace and profound gratitude. It is required reading for anyone interested in the life of the Church and the life of the heart.