Thomas Sheehan has always had a penchant for carrying things to their logical conclusions–and maybe a step or two beyond. In 1965, when he was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, he was entitled to a draft deferment. But his antiwar feelings were so strong that he insisted on registering as a conscientious objector–the first in the San Francisco area during the Vietnam era–and doing alternative service in place of military service. Later, at Fordham University in New York, Sheehan and a group of friends formed a committee that in three months secured the signatures of 2,000 prominent Catholics, including the presidents of six universities, who opposed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. During the 1968 student occupation of Columbia University buildings, Sheehan, a self-appointed passive resister, was inside when the police arrived. The lawmen treated active and passive resisters equally with their billy clubs and blackjacks, and Sheehan was picked up by the back of his pants and the scruff of his neck and hurled out the front door. “Those were great days,” Sheehan says. “We were such outrageous people.”
Sheehan begins with the critical analysis of New Testament writings, an analysis that was launched in the 19th century by European scholars such as Hermann Reimarus and Ernest Renan and continues today. Many of these scholars’ findings are now accepted even by conservative, born-again theologians. But Sheehan has gone on boring through the findings and has come out the other side–with his own troubling conclusions.
Sheehan then went a step further, arguing that the liberal consensus has pushed “Catholic theology to the limits of its own language,” that is, the old words simply no longer mean what they used to mean; resurrection, for example, does not have to mean a bodily resuscitation. He also posed that most threatening question, “What does Catholicism claim that makes it unique, essentially different from non-Catholic religions and non-religious humanism?”
He even had some kind things to say about Christian churches: “To say that Christianity distorts the message of Jesus is not to say that it is wrong. Christianity is not a false interpretation but one possible interpretation of the meaning of the Kingdom of God. And insofar as the Christian interpretation enables some people to live loving and meaningful lives, it is even ‘true,’ at least in the sense of making possible what the Greeks called ‘living well.’”
Sheehan says his father did not appreciate much of his restless activism during his student days. But whatever gulf had come between them was bridged in 1969 when his father was ill for the last time. “I stayed with him at night,” says Sheehan. “He was on morphine, but he couldn’t sleep. We talked about everything–a wonderful time. He even planned his funeral, told me how to arrange the dinner after–and be sure to get decent booze.” As an unspoken sign of their bond, Sheehan’s father asked him to put the peace symbol on his bedroom door.
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His continuing intellectual journey has been shaped by his studies of Heidegger and other modern philosophers, but especially by Rahner, whose views he has explored in many articles and one book. Sheehan’s face lights up at the mention of Rahner. He opens a volume of the theologian’s writings, and points out a passage that he says has affected him profoundly. “When we say that one should learn from the experience of one’s life whether Christianity is the truth of life, this does not demand anything which is beyond us. It simply tells us: ally yourself with what is genuine, with the challenging, with what demands everything, with the courage to accept the mystery within you. It simply tells us: go on, wherever you may find yourself at this particular moment, follow the light even though it is as yet dim; guard the fire even though it burns low as yet; call out to the mystery precisely because it is incomprehensible. Go, and you will find–hope and your hope is already blessed interiorly with the grace of fulfillment. Anyone who sets out in this manner may be far from the officially constituted Christianity; he may feel like an atheist, he may think fearfully that he does not believe in God–Christian teaching and conduct of life may appear strange and almost oppressive to him. But he should go on and follow the light shining in the innermost depth of his heart.”
Sheehan lives in a modest Rogers Park apartment with his wife, Diana, and his sons, Daniel Ortega, two and a half, and Matthew, almost one. He has nothing but praise for his acceptance at Loyola despite his controversial views. “I suspect that among members of the board of trustees and perhaps some members of the administration, my book has not been their favorite,” he says. “But because Loyola is an institution committed to academic freedom, I’m sure they would never make a gesture toward censuring me in any way.”
