Two years ago, at the age of 79, Joe Veale, loyal Jesuit and deeply spiritual man, wrote about the bleak and loveless lives of many nuns, priests and brothers.
He described the "private pain. . .loneliness. . .isolation. . the desert in the heart. . .self-hatred. . rage. . .having no say in the disposition of one's own life. . .the longing for human contact. . touch. . .the ache for tenderness and gentleness."
It was an outpouring of anger at the authoritarian, narrow-minded and philistine culture of the Church's leadership, both in Ireland and worldwide, and a cry too against the smug smile from the layman's armchair. He wanted people to ask why the scandals of clerical child-abuse had happened. What was the desolation that might explain, but not excuse, the depravity? This extraordinary article (in Doctrine and Life) appeared and disappeared with hardly a comment. His act of courage, the last act of his career, his "J'Accuse", had been countered in an Irish way - by silence.
He knew his subject. For the last 30 years his work had been mainly among the professional religious. In that world he was a famous director of retreats, an international authority on the "Spiritual Exercises" (that strange, terse foundation of Jesuit spirituality). He spent half of each year abroad, in North America, Britain, Africa. His writings were the subject of symposiums and conferences. He knew the inner lives of these lonely and selfless people. And he had a special sympathy for the lowest of the low among the clergy, the women religious.
Yet readers are more likely to have heard of Joe Veale as an educator, because before 1972 he had another life. Let us go back.
Joe's first assignment in 1954 was to teach at Gonzaga, a new school being touted as an experiment in education. Joe was the heavyweight who was to make the experiment work.
He believed that education should make people ask questions about society: Why are things as they are? Who is left out? How might things be made better? Education was also about speaking well and writing well, about asking those questions eloquently.
Many of the boys came from well-to-do families. Joe implicitly questioned the values they brought from home. He wanted these boys to grow into leaders who would create a better and more just society. In short, Joe was a subversive teacher and not all parents liked what he was doing. After all, he was supposed to be teaching English and Religious Knowledge. Indeed, not all the boys liked him. But no boy could ignore this quiet, slightly solemn Jesuit Socrates.
As time went by Joe became more widely known. He became a leading figure in the Association of English Teachers and (along with others he respected) played a role in the reform of the Department of Education's English curriculum. That was his most obvious gift to the country at large.
Did his boys become the leaders he envisaged? Life is more complicated than one man's blueprint. But many of those boys became his lifelong friends. In these last years he seemed satisfied with his friends even as he pushed, challenged and cajoled them, something he never stopped doing.
A quiet life would not have suited Joe Veale. He was expected in Boston the week after his collapse, and he was trying to get back to India, which had made a huge impression on him two years ago. He was 81.
R.G.