Remembering Patty Crowley, Godmother of Call To Action

Patricia “Patty” Crowley, long cherished as the godmother of Call To Action, died Nov. 23 at her home in Chicago. She was 92. A native of Chicago, Patty got her first dose of the church’s social teaching in a class at Trinity College, Washington, D.C., taught by the famous Msgr. John Ryan. “He talked about justice in society and labor unions. I think he opened my mind to another side of things.”

In 1937 she married Patrick Crowley. After Pat finished law school, the couple bought a home in suburban Wilmette, Ill. Between 1939 and 1947 they had four children: Patricia, Mary Ann, Patrick and Catherine -- plus a miscarriage and an infant who died. Meanwhile Pat had come in contact with a German priest, Fr. Louis Putz, who was advocating the observe-judge-act
method of social change that Canon Joseph Cardijn was pioneering in Europe – the Young Catholic Worker movement. Pat
and other young men began meeting with Putz and with Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand, a Chicago priest-enthusiast for the papal encyclical Mystici Corporis, which insisted the whole church, especially the laity, is the living body of Christ in the world today.

Both Pat and Patty took the new concepts to heart, especially the idea of applying gospel values to family life, politics, and social problems like poverty and racism. The method, they believed, could be useful for married couples as well as single workers. So they began holding couples’ meetings in their home. Part of the reason the new method worked, said Patty, was because the priest-chaplain of the group was barred from commenting until the end of the meeting. “For the first time in our experience with the church, our ideas were respected,” she said. “We were becoming independent, thinking for ourselves.”

Inspired to put into practice what they were learning, the Crowleys began taking on foster children. They would eventually house 14, and the last of these, Theresa, they adopted. They also welcomed scores of foreign students, and numberless visitors. Benedictine Sr. Patsy Crowley, Patty’s eldest, said, “We are grateful to our mother for teaching us to act according to the gospel. From an early age we were introduced to our world’s diversity of cultures, races, traditions, political movements, and literary expressions. Our home was always a place of learning and of meeting people from all over the world.”

The birth of CFM

The YCW-for-couples concept spread to Chicago parishes and then nationwide. In 1949 the first convention was held, and the phenomenon was christened the Christian Family Movement (CFM). In the 1950s and 1960s Pat and Patty traveled widely, forming new groups, stimulating existing ones, and making scores of lifelong friends. CFM reached its zenith of popularity in the mid-1960s, with some 125,000 couples participating in the U.S. and 26 foreign countries. The 1965 convention at Notre Dame University drew 5,000 people. The movement was training a generation of Catholics to ask questions, make judgments for themselves and take responsibility for decisions – in both the secular world and in church affairs. Fr. Andrew Greeley, a longtime friend of the Crowleys, said, “In terms of lay activism, Patty was the most important woman of her time, and CFM was the most important movement of the pre-conciliar church.”

The Birth Control Commission

In 1964 the Crowleys were invited by Pope Paul VI to take part in the Papal Birth Control Commission, originally created by Pope John XXIII to advise the papacy on the morality of new contraceptive methods. The Crowleys were one of three married couples expressly chosen for the group, which in its earlier meetings had been composed entirely of clergy, medical doctors, psychologists, population experts and social scientists. By the time Pat and Patty arrived, the commission had gone well beyond the morality of the pill and was asking whether the church should continue to call all forms of artificial birth control intrinsically evil. At their second meeting in 1966, the Crowleys presented the results of a sociological survey of married
couples, which they had authorized. It revealed how painful (and unsuccessful) most Catholic couples found the practice of rhythm, the church’s sole approved method of birth control.

The Crowleys were outspoken on the subject. During a heated discussion, Marcelino Zalba, a Spanish Jesuit moral theologian on the commission, asked, “What then with the millions we have sent to hell” if the rules are relaxed? Patty immediately responded in what became perhaps her most memorable quote. “Fr. Zalba,” she said, “Do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?

In the end, the commission recommended overwhelmingly that the strict prohibition against contraception should be lifted, and a belatedly summoned “overseer” commission of cardinals and bishops concurred with the decision. “I don’t think there was a doubt in any of our minds that the pope would follow the commission report,” Patty said at the time. But after a two-year wait Paul VI issued the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which flatly rejected the commission report and declared the prohibition would remain in force.

Patty and Pat were quite open and public about their disappointment. Twice in later years Patty spoke to Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin about it, but he could offer little comfort. Some 25 years after Humanae Vitae she put her feelings in an article for NCR: “I feel betrayed by the church. The pope continually states that birth control is evil, yet I know that couples must be practicing birth control. One never hears from the pulpit that birth control is intrinsically evil and should not be practiced. Is the church hypocritical?…I long for a church that is honest about its teachings, that admits its errors and faces the effects of rigidity with openness.”

Widowed at 61

The death of her husband Pat in 1974 was an even deeper, more personal cause of grief. But neither event sapped Patty’s energy. She remained a supporter (and sometimes critic) of CFM. Her personal efforts turned toward direct works of social justice and charity in public housing and feminist groups. In 1985 she co-founded Deborah’s Place, which has become the largest private, multi-service shelter operation for homeless women in Chicago. For many years, her daughter, Sr. Patsy Crowley, was executive director of Deborah’s Place. Patty epitomized the activist board member – marching to bring attention to the homeless, raising money, volunteering by serving meals and staying all night at the shelter.

Until three years ago, Patty was the irrepressible coordinator of a group of some 35 women who met in her apartment of the 88th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago for what she called “conscience-raising sessions.” They included prayer, discussion of issues like poverty, racism and the nuclear arms race, a film or speaker, and dinner afterwards, cooked and served by Patty. And every Sunday without fail before her final illness, Patty and Patsy would “go to jail” – to the federal detention center for women in Chicago where they would talk with the prisoners, play bingo and bring yards of yarn for knitting.

Nurturing CTA

Patty was deeply involved in CTA from its inception. Present at the original Call To Action of the U.S. Bishops, she attended every CTA conference from 1978 to 2004. In her latter years she came in a wheelchair and was hugged, kissed and photographed by the multitude. She was in fact a kind of godmother to Call To Action, even as Msgr. Jack Egan had been the movement’s godfather. Said co-directors Dan and Sheila Daley, “Patty Crowley broke new ground as a lay woman leader in the church. Call To Action is grateful for her support but most of all for her life, that continues to inspire those striving to live the gospel today.”

When scolded for her insistence that the church must change, she took the rebuffs in stride. When the diocesan paper of Lincoln, Neb., Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz called her “a very old degenerate who roams about promoting sexual immorality,” Patty laughed and then composed a scrapbook to hold the deluge of supportive notes and letters she received from friends all over the country; on the first page of the scrapbook she pasted the dictionary definition of “degenerate”.

As Patty’s health slowly declined over the past 10 years, she provided a blunt, typically pithy summary of the spiritual outlook that guided her life.” I say the only important thing is Jesus’ message, and the rest of the rules are for the birds. So give food to the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, help the sick and visit those in prison. That’s what I do.”