5
ments, and John Duryea joined with Robert McAfee Brown in fostering such dialogue both on the Stanford campus, where
Brown was in the Religious Studies Department, and between the community at St. Ann’s and that at nearby First Presbyte-
rian Church. John also served as model for a Catholic engagement with the world encouraged by the Council: a strong and
noted pacifist, he was also ahead of his time in drawing attention to the importance of care for the environment.
Father Gene Boyle replaced John as chaplain after John resigned as pastor in January, 1976, to marry the artist Eve de Bona.
Gene quickly restored calm to the shaken community, and he also made us more aware than ever of the Council’s injunction
to make care for the poor and the oppressed our priority. He had worked side by side with Robert McAfee Brown in civil
rights protests and with Cesar Chavez and the grape pickers as they struggled for economic justice. Gene also continued the
conciliar emphasis that John had given to re-conceptualizing the Church not as a hierarchy dominated by clerical power but
as a pilgrim people of God in daily common search for increased holiness.
True, that common search necessarily had its periods of struggle, especially as the needs of disparate parts of the community
underwent change. By 1980, with a 10:30 Mass established on campus and the 4:30 liturgy much enlivened, Stanford students
and faculty, the Gelpis among them, tended to have their base on the Stanford campus, while the more general community,
centered in Palo Alto but extending through the whole Peninsula area, found its home at St. Ann’s.
Administering and counseling these two communities, each so successful in its different way, continued after Bishop Du-
maine invited the Jesuits to take over the chaplaincy in 1983, and Father Russ Roide, a gifted counselor, much in demand at
both places, had a heavy workload during his eight years as chaplain, as did his successor, Father Jim Erps. But those years,
through his efforts and those of his assistants, including Nancy Greenfield, whom he brought onto the staff in 1983, also
brought increasing stability, growth, and intellectual vigor to the campus community. For example, a lecture series endowed
by the Classics Professor, Kurt Reinhardt and dating back to the beginning of Russ’s tenure, brought impressive speakers to
campus over the years—among them Archbishop Quinn, Rosemary Reuther, Sister Helen Prejean, Garry Wills, and Peter
Steinfeld. As even the listing of those names suggests, these visitors were keeping us abreast of the ongoing implementation
of the Council’s goals, despite ongoing pressures in the Church to return to the older tradition.
Father Patrick Labelle strode onto the Stanford stage in 1995, when the Dominicans took over the campus ministry. Within
a comparatively short time after that, the support of Bishop Pierre Dumaine made possible the creation of a separate Univer-
sity-based parish at Stanford, Saint Dominic’s, so that all of Patrick’s considerable energies could focus on a single—though
highly diverse—community. Patrick, like his predecessors, fostered that diversity, and in doing so gave heed to the primacy
the Council places on the individual conscience. He also encouraged and much expanded the
opportunities open to the community for ministering to those in need. And, by bringing the
liturgist Teresa Pleins onto the staff, he gave renewed attention to the Council’s injunction to
make the liturgy a central expression and focus of the community’s experience of God.
Theresa’s creation of a full choir was to have more impact on the Gelpis’ community participa-
tion than we at first knew. Not long before Christmas in the year 2000, Patrick succeeded in
getting permission for the Catholic Community to hold Midnight Mass in Memorial Church,
but since all the student members of the choir would be gone for the holidays, Teresa sent
out an S.O.S. to members of the permanent community. Al and I answered that call and have
been members of the choir ever since. Throughout the previous decades we were participants
in different forms of service, but the choir has given us a special focus: a microcosm that
embraces all parts of the community—undergrads, graduate students, young adults, and per-
manent community members—its task is also central to our very reason for being. Patrick’s
successor, Father Nathan Castle, never tires of repeating the mystery that we can never com-
prehend fully enough: the infinite God loves us and wants only love back from us. When we
get even a glimmer of that truth, how can we, the pilgrim people of God, keep from singing?
the choir
has given
us a special
focus: a
microcosm
that
embraces
all parts
of the
community.
