I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You by Ralph McInerny

First published: Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006

Genre: Nonfiction

Subgenres: Autobiography; church history

Core issues: Catholics and Catholicism; faith; knowledge; truth

Overview

In his brief and readable autobiography I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You, Ralph McInerny traces the events that led him away from a life as a priest to the life of a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a parallel career as the author of more than sixty-five Father Dowling mysteries. Arranged chronologically, the book clusters events around themes expressed in the chapter titles. McInerny traces his growth from his Irish Catholic boyhood and early education through his appointment at Notre Dame. He describes his success as a writer of popular fiction, then addresses more directly the passions of his intellectual and religious life. Two of these are the life and teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the erosion of the Catholic Church’s traditional identity through the effects of Vatican II.

McInerny’s family members were firmly and deeply committed to the practice of Catholicism. His parents were strictly observant believers; his mother, in fact, was a lay member of a religious order. McInerny’s studies at a Catholic college-preparatory school were the same as those offered to young men planning to enter the priesthood. McInerny assumed his life would lead to ordination, but before leaving high school, he had turned his sights toward scholarship and university teaching. His undergraduate and graduate work culminated with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Laval University.

At his university, McInerny immersed himself in the study of Aquinas and the foundations of Scholasticism. These interests followed him throughout his career, the entirety of which (except a brief stint at Creighton University) was spent at Notre Dame. The location of many of his mystery stories on campus suggests that for McInerny, Notre Dame made possible a seamless integration of his family, his two careers, and his spiritual life.

A major focus of the later chapters of McInerny’s memoir is the shift at Notre Dame from the sacred toward the secular in education generally, but in the philosophy department specifically. This shift he attributes to the misguided desire of Notre Dame, like the ancient Israelites, to be like its neighbors. To achieve this competitive likeness with secular institutions such as Stanford or Brown, McInerny believes that Notre Dame gradually gave away a significant part of what made it unique—its Catholic heritage. In its place came a “culture of dissent,” made up of faculty eager to prove to the world that even though they worked at Notre Dame, they answered to no one, most especially the Vatican. Much of his life was spent in rallying students and faculty to resist these trends and preserve their heritage.

Obedience to authority is a key element of McInerny’s Christian values. Despite the Church’s lapses over the centuries, McInerny separates the incorrect or even evil acts of individuals from the “magisterium” of the Church: its authority to define and teach doctrine. That authority is larger than individuals and even that of entire eras, McInerny affirms. As his autobiography progresses, McInerny expresses his concern for the Church more forcefully. Vatican II is the central cause of these concerns. The changes reflected in the documents of Vatican II were not simply stylistic, McInerny feels, but substantial and damaging. McInerny points out the influences of liberal theologians like Karl Rahner and the even greater impact of a manipulative world press. Authors of the documents that came out of this council caved in to pressure from clergy and laity alike, he says, to make the Church “relevant” to modern life. The resulting downshift in interpretation of doctrine into the lives of laity has produced confusion and rudderless drifting by a generation reared on these revisions. McInerny feels this loss to be deep and grievous, a feeling that may have inspired the title of his book. Like the servant in Job, McInerny announces to his readers what they may expect to experience next as their weakened Church attempts to respond to its challenges.

Increasingly marginalized in his own discipline and relegated to the sidelines by modernist philosophers, McInerny made subtle use of his popular fiction as a pulpit for his understated views. Father Dowling, a recovering alcoholic, became a genial spokesperson for McInerny’s conservative beliefs. Liberal in compassion and forgiveness, this character is nonetheless thoughtful and regretful about much of what has happened to the Church. It is one of McInerny’s best strategies as a writer to make this priest gracious and urbane rather than didactic. As a result, Father Dowling became a comforting figure for many Catholics, especially those mourning the loss of traditional features of their faith.

McInerny acknowledges that he is better known for his career as a writer of popular fiction, but he has not gone unnoticed as a scholar and teacher. Holder of two Fulbrights for study abroad, he also served on the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanity and received several honorary degrees and numerous awards from philosophical societies. His students have gone on to major appointments at universities in the United States and abroad, and their scholarly work keeps the contributions of Aquinas, Maritain, and McInerny alive. Indeed, this volume of reflections on scholarship, family life, and contemporary Catholicism is, despite its title, confident and hopeful. Its judgments are rueful instead of gloating, and its celebrations of the stream of good people through McInerny’s life are filled with gratitude and hope.

Christian Themes

McInerney’s autobiography, as well as the body of his scholarship, focuses primarily on tradition, specifically the usefulness and relevance of the thought of Thomas Aquinas to modern Christianity. Like Aquinas, McInerny considers it self-evident that the human mind is a meaning-making device. An innate desire to know, humanity’s defining trait, not only motivates the mind’s practical, secular curiosity, which has produced a wide range of accomplishments in the arts and sciences, but also drives the human being to know God. One’s innate logical powers, McInerny feels, can lead one to respect the hard-won truths of tradition and apply their guidelines to contemporary life.

While it does not have the ecstasy of mysticism or the fire of dramatic conversion, McInerny’s experience of Christianity does not lack joy or depth. McInerny does find in his examination of the details of his ordinary life an intriguing element of mystery. Particularly where self-knowledge is concerned, he finds himself, like Saint Paul, unable to say with certainty at some moments whether he is in a state of grace. McInerny’s definition of faith is, in part, the willingness to rest within occasional uncertainties, comforted by similar experiences expressed by saints and mystics throughout the history of Christianity.

As his autobiography progresses, McInerny’s concern for the future of Christianity emerges as an overriding theme. In the latter chapters, McInerny sees modern philosophers and theologians as those who, in the abandonment of authority and tradition, have set on a clear path toward disaster. In his arguments, McInerny repeatedly relies on common sense and elementary logic to show that the dismantling of faith and ethics through pluralism, relativism, or simple wrongheaded dissent is for him fraught with peril. In this domain, McInerny presents himself candidly as a prophet calling on church officials, scholars, and laity to review their faith and return to its core values.

Sources for Further Study

Gorman, Anita G. “Ralph McInerny.” In American Mystery and Detective Writers. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 2005. An overview of McInerny’s detective fiction with analyses of individual novels and an exhaustive survey of critical reactions to his work in this genre. McInerny’s Father Dowling series draws its vitality from its deft depiction of social mores of Catholic society, according to Gorman.

Hibbs, Thomas, and John O’Callaghan, eds. Recovering Nature: Essays in Natural Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics in Honor of Ralph McInerny. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. A collection of essays analyzing the leadership of McInerny in opening a dialogue among competing interpreters of the intellectual heritage of Catholicism.

Labrie, Ross. “Ralph McInerny.” In The Catholic Imagination in American Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Labrie cites McInerny’s record of creativity, both in fiction and in scholarship, as evidence of a uniquely Catholic sensibility tied to the artist’s self-conscious identification with his religious tradition.