Don Briel #1

I, of course, have no idea how to manage a website and expect few readers. However, some people may stumble across this on a google search or if I write enough I may spread the link.

I'd like to reflect on my dad, Don Briel, founder of Catholic Studies at St Thomas in Minnesota. He has a public profile. The only surviving person I'm aware of who knew my dad well in the early days at St. Thomas is Bishop Arthur Kennedy (Boston) who was instrumental in hiring him in 1981. I know two of dad's surviving friends from undergraduate years who have a different view of the Catholic Studies project than I do. The undergraduate friends have been helpful. I will reach out to Bishop Kennedy as well as Fr. Richard Schenk, OP, who was in the Dominican novitiate with my dad in, I think, 1971-1972.

This and, if there are any, subsequent posts, are written for myself and my family, as well as for people who knew him later in life, especially from 1990 and later, and are interested in learning more about dad's formation, especially intellectual.

Dad died in February 2018. I asked my dad questions about his life since my earliest childhood and think I know things and have impressions that might interest readers. Dad had his limitations and, while I intend to share some of them, this will not be a "tell-all." That's not your business, dear reader.

My dad's disciples have heard of the influence of Frank O'Malley at Notre Dame. Interestingly, O'Malley grew up in the small town of Clinton, MA, where my wife is from. O'Malley was a generous, deeply affectionate, chaste alcoholic- often not able to stand up at the faculty lounge unless he was holding onto the bar. O'Malley who, I was told, was the highest paid employee at the university at one point (paid one dollar more than the head football coach) often didn't cash his paycheck. I've heard stories about how he would take out groups of undergraduates for steak dinners and leave early, having paid the bill. Thirty years ago my dad opened up one of his old books and a paper napkin fell out that O'Malley had written on during a meal at a restaurant.

When my dad returned from studying abroad in Angers his sophomore year, O'Malley would greet him as "the cosmopolitan." Apparently dad dated Hesburgh's niece in Angers, and Hesburgh took them to a grand ceremony in Paris. A brief note- dad returned to Nevada in January or February 1967 because he said that the living conditions in Angers were terrible (maggots in the salad) but I suspect also that he was homesick. This was just before May of '68 and I wonder if there was some of that in the air.

O'Malley's influence on my dad was massive. His little known "Christ College" piece, unpublished, was a massive and apparently unknown influence on my dad. That O'Malley of Notre Dame has an analysis of it, I believe. I have inherited my dad's copy of a transcript which may or may not match a piece in the O'Malley archives at Notre Dame. Of course, I took the typescript out of my dad's files a few years ago and now can't find it. I hope to find it this summer. I do retain O'Malley's syllabus for Christ College. Some of it is smudged.

Another major influence on my dad, little-known, was Joseph Evans another, I believe, bachelor don at ND who founded the Maritain Center. Ralph McInerny took it over after Evans and I spent a year writing my dissertation (2014-2015) at the Maritain Center. David Solomon set me up there, calling in a favor from the director, John O'Callaghan. I have some correspondence from Evans to my dad somewhere.

My dad has a number of English translations of Maritain, translated by Evans, that were gifts from Evans and bear his inscriptions. These are often from the years immediately after my dad's undergraduate degree. I don't remember dad taking a course from Evans and when I looked at his undergraduate transcript a few years ago none of them stood out to me as his. I

Dad may have come to know Evans when he was at ND in the fall of 1972 (spent a week in law school- I think Charles Rice encouraged him to withdraw- and then took graduate courses (in theology, I think)) in the humanities. Dad was an assistant rector at one of the dorms on North Quad (across the quad from North Dining Hall- I forget which one). I have some correspondence from him from that time.

There are some other things I've learned only orally. Tom Stritch, whom my dad did not know well, I think, another bachelor don, was in love with Flannery O'Connor and I have heard, courted her unsuccessfully. She came to ND a couple of times in the late 50s and early 60s to lecture. There are a few letters between them in Sally Fitzgerald's The Habit of Being. Did Stritch not marry because O'Connor was the love of his life? Se non è vero, è bello.

I think it's important to know that dad's intellectual and aesthetic formation at Notre Dame was under the influence of a remarkable group of men, largely bachelors, who were deeply influenced by, obviously, English Catholic literary figures of the first half of the 20th century, but also the French Catholic literary renaissance of the same time. I have not come across much influence of the ressourcement figures of Catholic theology in these bachelor dons (I see no mention of de Lubac, Congar, Danielou in dad's correspondence until he went to study theology in Strasburg- although I suspect he must have been influenced by them in the fall of 1972). The serious Catholics at ND in the 1960s were Thomists through and through.

O'Malley prized Romano Guardini and, because of him, Rilke, especially the Duino Elegies which I admit I've not yet read. So there was Guardini in the blood there too. My dad, when I knew him, appreciated Guardini but was more interested in Newman and ressourcement figures. I don't know that dad ever taught Guardini but Alex Lessard, whom my dad called his most gifted student and graduated from UST in 1985 or 86, might know.

It is important to note that Fr. Garret Ahlers, SJ, did extensive interviews with my dad as he was dying in January 2018 with the intent of writing a history of Catholic Studies. Nothing has come of that yet. I have not received a copy of these recordings although I have pursued them.